


The Guilty Bystander

by cthene



Series: Know Thyself [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Body Horror, Fluff, Fluffy Gore?, Gore, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Touch-Starved, Virgin Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-15 09:06:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7216276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthene/pseuds/cthene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You like this story, don't you Ren?   It's <i>awfully</i> romantic.   Let's pretend it's true.   Let's pretend we conspired together to overthrow him.”  </p><p>Hux gets in over his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You're awake.”

 

Hux groans in answer, his mouth thick and sour. His eyelids stick as he blinks them open. His vision is hopelessly blurred. The stench of decaying flesh fills his senses and he struggles to right himself, only to find that he can't move any of his limbs.

 

“It's alright.” Kylo Ren is looming over him like a scythe. “I was able to stop it before it reached your vital organs.”

 

“What...?”

 

“I've seen him do this before. It starts at the extremities and moves inward, in order to maximize the victim's suffering.”

 

Hux manages to raise his head about forty-five degrees. He recognizes the bunk beneath him as his own, on which his naked body (or at least what's left of it) has been lain out: a quivering white torso, clammy with sweat, and four tumid, seeping, black-green limbs. “Ren–” he chokes, his throat clotted with mucus. “What have you done?” His arms and legs flop uselessly as he squirms on his back. They look gangrenous, rotted through, ready to plop right off. A wave of lightheaded confusion passes over him. He notices that his flaky, yellowed toenails have begun to peel away from his corpse-like toes, and for some reason it is this detail which causes the reality of the situation to catch up with him. “Ren!” he screams, eyes bulging with terror. “ _Ren!_ ”

 

“Don't yell at me. Do you even realize–?” The knight's gloved hands are extended, his caf-dark doe eyes darting furtively around the room. “I'm keeping you alive right now,” he says, at once boastful and shy, like a child showing off his collection of seashells or stones. “With my mind.”

 

Hux tries to respond, but his mouth is suddenly filling with clumpy, black blood. He emits a low, gurgling sound, horrible even to his own ears, when he realizes the decay is spreading. Whatever is eating away at his body, it is no process of nature. It is a thing of sheer will, a will to see him dead, a will strong enough to warp nature itself. Only Kylo Ren's strange powers prevent it from consuming him whole.

 

“Relax.” Ren winces, moving as if to lay his hands on Hux's chest but stopping just short of actual contact. “I. I'm going to fix this.”

 

“How–?” Hux manages.

 

“Well. It's hard to explain. I can try and tell you after I've done it.”

 

“No, you dolt! I mean, how did this happen?”

 

“Oh.” Ren blinks. “What's the last thing you remember?”

 

Hux sputters and closes his eyes, trying to summon his memories through the fog of his fear.

 

-

 

They were standing side-by-side in Snoke's audience chamber. Ren had been extremely agitated ever since they had received the summons, but he refused to explain why.

 

“You know what must be done,” the Supreme Leader had said, without preamble, in a way that made it clear to Hux that he was not a part of the conversation. His heart had begun to race then, though his features betrayed nothing, as he considered what his exclusion might mean.

 

“Please,” Ren had sobbed softly, glancing back and forth between them. “You said. I could have this.”

 

“Indeed. I had hoped it might teach you the folly of such spiritual excess. You have indulged yourself, and now there must be... consequences.”

 

“I–” He turned towards Hux, his hand hovering over the glinting cylinder clipped to his belt. “I can't–” he stammered, shaking his head.

 

Hux staggered back as adrenaline spiked through him, momentarily hijacking his gross motor functions, when he realized what was happening. Realized that the knight was being ordered to kill him. That he was about to die. That there was nothing he could do to stop it. That he would never even know the reason.

 

“I have confidence in you,” Snoke had said gently, his strange, pewter gaze softening in encouragement. “You have faced this trial already and emerged victorious.”

 

“No,” Ren whimpered. “This is different. This. Is something new, for me.”

 

And then Snoke had frowned, looking more confused than displeased.

 

“There are different _kinds_ ,” Ren continued, glancing swiftly up and then back down again. “I've never had this kind before.”

 

“I see,” Snoke rumbled, placing his gnarled white hands on the arms of his chair and pushing himself to his feet. “How... unfortunate.”

 

“You said I could have this,” Ren repeated, like an incantation. And then, without taking his eyes off Snoke, he stepped protectively in to front of Hux, fingers curling around the hilt of his saber. “You lied.”

 

**-**

 

“I remember,” Hux grunts, craning his neck to better survey the wreckage of his body. It occurs to him that Snoke is doing this to him somehow, from wherever he is, while Ren, amidst all his blinking and stammering, is somehow counteracting it. “But I don't understand. Why were you ordered– to kill me?” he gags, blood and mucus dripping from his chin onto his shuddering chest. “And why– did you refuse?” Ren has always been fanatically devoted to the Supreme Leader. The thought of him defying Snoke is inconceivable. And yet here they are.

 

“The answer to both questions is the same,” Ren says cryptically, seating himself on the edge of the bed. His hands continue to hover, trembling minutely in the air, a few centimeters away from Hux's blighted flesh.

 

“Spare me your Jedi kōans,” Hux manages to sneer around a mouthful of his own stomach bile.

 

“It's not obvious to you?”

 

“You'll have to forgive my obtuseness.”

 

“You're my _Love_ ,” says Ren shyly, his soft mouth a scrunching rose. His gaze lifts expectantly. “Are you not?”

 

“Your what? What in all the gods' names are you prattling about?” Hux cries, growing hysterical. Surely this is some sort of fever dream, or else he's finally succumbed to space madness, because there is not a single thing about this situation that makes sense.

 

“My Love,” Ren repeats, brow furrowing, voice beginning to waver. “We're in love, aren't we?”

 

“ _In love?_ ” Hux chokes. “We scarcely know each other! I can count the number of times I've seen your face on one hand!”

 

“But we–”Ren stands, backing away in distress. “We were together,” he says, blinking furiously. “You kissed me.”

 

“People kiss all the time! I doesn't necessarily mean they're in love!”

 

“I thought–” He stops, shoulders heaving, eyes huge and starry with unshed tears. “I disobeyed him. For _you_. Because I thought–”

 

Hux hacks loudly, trying in vain to clear his throat. This is, apparently, actually happening to him. He must subdue his mortal terror. He must think tactically. First, the facts: He is lying here in agony because Snoke wants him dead. Snoke wants him dead because Ren's childlike, delusional mind has fabricated a romance between them. Said delusion currently represents his only hope of survival. Therefore: He must appease the lovelorn sorcerer, at least long enough for him to undo this horrible curse. Also: How did they end up in this mess in the first place?

 

Clearly, he and Ren do not share the same interpretation of certain recent events.

 

_-_

 

Of course, everything changed with the destruction of Starkiller. Their relationship was no exception.

 

Before, for all that they had been colleagues and rivals, they had more or less remained strangers. Hux couldn't be certain, for the first year of their acquaintance, whether Kylo Ren ate or slept. Before hauling his dead weight across the frozen surface of a collapsing planet, Hux still wasn't entirely convinced he was human. Afterwards, watching the medical droids peel the blood-caked fabric from his wounded body aboard the evacuation craft, he could have no doubt.

 

The loss of Starkiller had put them on the defensive. Emboldened by their victory, the Resistance had begun to go after the First Order's bases with new, unprecedented aggression. Hux was forced to keep his fleet in constant motion, and the standard supply chains and information channels were becoming increasingly unreliable. Morale aboard the Finalizer dwindled as they found themselves adrift in space, running low on rations, without orders from the Supreme Leader for weeks at a time. Even after he eventually returned from his mysterious training, Ren would often vanish without explanation, only to reappear days later, usually wounded. Unlike the rest of them, he was apparently still receiving missions.

 

Hux would stand on the bridge, gazing into the void of space, struggling to master his growing sense of frustration and futility. In the immediate aftermath of Starkiller, he had expected swift punishment for his failure, and when it didn't come, he had begun to almost crave it. Nothing could be worse, he reasoned, than this interminable, nauseous waiting.

 

And then one day, things took an unexpected, though not entirely unwelcome, turn.

 

Struck by a sudden, inconvenient stiffness in his groin, Hux had ducked into the fresher with the intention of giving himself a few efficient tugs and returning immediately to work, as was his usual routine. But this time, he was to be interrupted. Before he could lock himself in one of the privacy stalls, he heard the sound of heavy, filtered breathing issuing over his shoulder.

 

“Whatever quarrel you have with me, Ren, surely it can wait,” he had sighed, too weary to muster much indignation at being so rudely followed.

 

“Let me do it,” Ren had said, nodding in the direction of Hux's groin.

 

“Are you... serious?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Awfully forward of you.”

 

“I thought you despised inefficiency, General.”

 

Hux had laughed.

 

And so, innocently enough, it had begun.

 

-

 

“How could I have been so foolish?” Ren is snarling, pacing the floor of Hux's tidy, narrow quarters. “You didn't even feel– And so what if you had?” he whips back around, tears falling freely. “What difference would it have made?” The room around them begins to shake, the sparse furnishings jostling and scraping against the floor, datapads and other small articles hovering in the air. Ren looks down at his own hands in distress. “Why did I think I could do this without him?” he sobs. “He's gone a few hours, and already– Already I can't– When he's gone, I can't–” He lurches on his feet, as though receiving a blow to the gut from some invisible assailant. The air around him is growing staticky, his body seeming to hum like high tension wire after a storm. “He's punished me like this before,” he says. “But he never abandons me for long. He always comes back.” As the mounting hum around Ren's body reaches an imperceptibly high pitch, a crystal decanter on the shelf behind him explodes into glittering sand.

 

Is this the Light they speak of, Hux wonders? This buzzing, tearing, treble sound? In his state of delirium, Hux almost fancies he can see Ren glowing. Perhaps being on the cusp of death has brought him closer to the Force. Either that, or he's simply hallucinating.

 

“What if he doesn't forgive me this time? What if he won't take me back?” Ren's face is twisted in agony. “What am I going to do?” He's sobbing grossly, clear mucus running over his chin. “You've done this!” he screams at Hux. “You've _ruined_ me. Ruined _everything_.”

 

Ren's powers momentarily fill the room– an invisible, impossible substance seeming to fly out of him in all directions before retracting back into him again. The overhead lights explode, bathing him in a hail of yellow sparks before plunging the room into blackness. After a few moments, a strip of backup florescents activates, making everything look flat, and drained, and overbright. The shrill, droning hum dies down as chest heaving, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, Ren manages to regain some modicum of control over himself.

 

“Please,” Hux chokes, closing his eyes against the horrible image of his own green, decaying limbs under the punishing light. He turns his face against the pillow, whimpering as the rot begins to creep up his thighs. “Don't leave me like this,” he says, in the most measured tone he can muster under the circumstances. There is no reason to make a fool of himself by unnecessarily begging and scraping. Often, he has learned, the simplest negotiation tactics are the most effective. Begin by outright asking for everything you want, and proceed from there. “I don't want to die.”

 

“Neither did the inhabitants of the Hosnian System,” Ren sneers. “So I guess no one's getting what they want out of all this,” he gestures around contemptuously. “Good job wasting everyone's time, General.” Though he is visibly shaking with heartbreak, it has done nothing to dampen his bratty sarcasm. Maybe it's just that he's grappling for anything even remotely familiar but, lightheaded as he is, Hux can't help but find this fact oddly charming.

 

Ren drops his hands, his whole body slackening with misery. As soon as Ren stops focusing his powers on him, Hux resumes rotting away apace, his toenails seeming to grow longer before flaking off entirely, like a time lapse recording of human decomposition.

 

“Ren- Merciful gods! _Ren!_ Make it stop!” He is hyperventilating, his torso thrashing while pinned to the bed by his four dead limbs, his mind clawing at nothing, desperate for any means of escape. “You said you wanted me to love you!” he cries.

 

“So?” Ren hisses.

 

“So, I can't very well love you if I'm dead, now can I?”

 

“But–” Ren's mouth opens, dumbly.

 

“But keep me alive, and we'll see what happens!” Hux roars.

 

Ren's eyes light up, his spine suddenly straightening. “You're. You're saying, if I fix you– You're saying maybe we can still–” he rambles, more to himself than to Hux. Turning his body back around, he sucks in a deep breath and throws up his hands.

 

“ _Ren!_ ” Hux screams, slamming his head repeatedly back against the pillow as the decay threatens to consume his groin.

 

“I'm sorry!” says Ren. “I need to. Refocus. It takes a minute.”

 

Hux tries to retort that he doesn't have a minute, but his throat is suddenly clogged with rotting chunks of something he probably can't afford to lose. He can't even scream as his genitals wither away, as his intestines corrode into blackened sludge.

 

If only Ren could have halted the curse earlier, Hux thinks, he could have survived. Even without his limbs, he could have managed, could have gotten prosthetics. Now, it's too late.

 

He's imagined himself dying, like the great Tarkin, in a ball of fire. Going down with his ship. While this certainly appeals to him, he's always, somewhat guiltily, preferred the idea of something a bit more intimate. Being struck down, face to face, by some worthy enemy. Maybe even General Organa herself, if he was being fanciful. She would level her blaster directly at his heart and deliver some parting quip– _No_. She would stop his heart with her mystical powers, and the last thing he'd ever see would be the righteous fury in her eyes.

 

Instead, it's come to this. A painful, humiliating, honorless death. All because stupid Kylo Ren has a stupid, schoolboy crush on him, of which the knight's demonic master doesn't approve. His very last thought before blacking out from the pain is that Snoke has probably never even had anyone jerk him off, probably doesn't even understand what his precious apprentice has been doing to Hux all these months.

 

-

 

He dreams of a swirling, pitchblende sky.

 

At first, it's filled with too many stars to count, but he quickly realizes they are being extinguished one at a time, his stomach sinking at the thought that soon there will be none left at all. He tries to look down at himself, but it's too dark for him to see his own hands, even when he holds them mere centimeters away from his face. He looks back up at the sky to find it empty of stars, an endless, yawning field of black. There is no sky, no horizon, and suddenly he can't tell which way is up anymore.

 

He can't tell if he's floating perfectly still in space or endlessly falling. He grips his belly, which is churning with nausea, and realizes, with a jolt, where all the stars have gone. He has swallowed them. He can feel his gut seizing, his throat clogging with mucus, but when he opens his mouth, ready for more of the clumpy, black vomit to spill out all over his chest, a blinding red beam erupts from it instead. The beam roars out of his mouth, ripping his jaw clean off with its power. It thickens, exploding from the front of his skull, until his whole face is just a gaping maw shooting out red light. Even without eyes he can somehow still see it: the infinite finger of cold red fire tearing across the black void.

 

His mind is a wordless blank of screaming horror.

 

-

 

When he comes to, Hux is naked, sprawled on the floor of his small hydro unit, vomiting blood into the drain. Instead of the thick, putrid, black sludge he was coughing up before, this blood is bright red, iron-flavored, and fresh. Ren is holding him under the sanistream, raking his oversized, ungloved hands through Hux's hair. Hux is momentarily overwhelmed by Ren's characteristic odor of nerf wool and sweat. He tries to shake off the petting hands, but he's so weak he can barely move. The green-black rot is sloughing off of him in long, grisly strips, leaving him practically skinned alive. Catching a glimpse of the horribly shiny, bright pink skin beneath it, he tries to cry out, but only ends up vomiting more blood.

 

“It's alright,” Ren is saying fervently. “It's going to be alright.”

 

Hux might contest this, but he's already losing consciousness again.

 

-

 

The next time he wakes, he's lying flat on his back, staring up at his bedroom ceiling. The room is pleasantly dim. At first he's too afraid to move, but after several moments and a few deep breathes, he turns over to find Ren's hulking form curled beside him.

 

“You fixed the lights,” he says.

 

Ren's eyes flutter open. “Yes.” He smiles, peering dreamily at Hux through his lashes. “And _you_.”

 

Hux lifts a hand into his field of vision, groaning with the effort. Sure enough, the throbbing appendage looks almost like a proper hand again, though there are spongy indentations where his fingernails should be. He peels back the covers, squinting at himself in the low light. His new pink flesh is raw and hypersensitive, but there's a certain healthy fullness to his figure that wasn't there before, the mean layer of protein hugging his bones having marginally thickened so as to better conceal his ribs and the nobs of his shoulders. He feels sore all over, but it's the kind of soreness that promises to resolve itself into strength after a good night's sleep.

 

He's still naked, he realizes with belated embarrassment, while Ren remains fully, monastically clad.

 

“Not _fully_ ,” says Ren. “I'm not wearing my helmet. Or my gloves.”

 

“I suppose for you that practically qualifies as being naked,” Hux snorts. The way Ren blushes and averts his eyes at this causes something in Hux's chest to flutter, and for a moment he's worried some of his organs are still hanging lose. It occurs to him that he should probably be more bothered by the fact that Ren has just casually read his mind.

 

“I won't, if you don't want me to,” says Ren softly. “I could even teach you how to conceal your thoughts from me, if that would help.”

 

“Help?”

 

“Help you. To trust me, I mean. If we can't trust each other then, well. How can we ever be in love?”

 

Hux freezes. He had almost forgotten. Ren's imagined relationship with him. The cause of all this in the first place. He riffles through a list of possible tactics, dismissing most of them out of hand. Whatever Ren's miraculous restorative abilities, they are equalled or exceeded by his capacity for destruction. Hux must tread carefully if he is to avoid the latter. Which means he has little choice but to play along with some sort of sham romance. And for how long, the rest of his life? Of course, his life will probably be fairly short, he reasons, since Ren will inevitably become bored with him and kill him in an effort to get back into Snoke's good graces.

 

“No,” Ren mouths. “Don't think such things.”

 

“Why not?” Hux asks. “You were just saying earlier what a mistake you'd made, how desperate you were for Snoke to take you back–”

 

“I–” Ren says tremulously, his eyes shining with emotion. “Please, I– I realize now that my. Expectations. Were unrealistic.” He raises a hand as if to reach for Hux's face, only to let it drop back down again to his side. “While you were sleeping, I thought about what you said before. About us not knowing each other very well. I guess I felt that we _did_. Know each other, I mean. But now I think you were right. Falling in love is. Complicated. I'll understand, if you need more time.”

 

Hux swallows thickly, wondering if its even worth it to try and deceive a kriffing wizard who can read his thoughts. Before, his fear of Ren's abilities was tempered by his confidence with respect to his own position in the Order. He felt certain of the Supreme Leader's hold on Ren's leash, and he generally assumed he could rely upon Snoke to protect him from Ren. Now, all of a sudden, he must rely upon Ren to protect him from Snoke.

 

A prospect made all the more terrifying by his recent experience of Snoke's powers.

 

He runs an experimental hand down his torso, flinching at the tenderness of what he finds between his legs. He's all there, alright. Inflamed and raw, but all in one piece. “How?” he rasps. “Did I really... fall apart like that? How am I even alive right now, if any of that was real?” He's in shock, he realizes. It's the only explanation for how well he's taking all this.

 

“I put you all back together again,” says Ren, sounding awfully pleased with himself. “Just as you were before. No– Better than you were before.” He keeps unconsciously raising his hand, as if to touch Hux, and then quickly retracting it. “I don't even know how, but I think I might have put a little bit more muscle on you.” He smiles, his dark eyes sparkling with a kind of deranged mirth. “Consider it a gift, for my Love.”

 

Hux squeezes his eyes shut, cursing under his breath. Any moment now, surely, he's going to wake up again in real life.

 

-

 

He thinks back to the first of their little encounters, in that damn fresher stall.

 

He remembers the way Ren had unfastened the clasp at the front of his jodhpurs, almost reverently, before reaching inside with embarrassing, brutish haste.

 

“No gloves,” Hux had snapped. “And your hands had better be clean.”

 

Ren had flinched at this, saying nothing as he peeled away his black leather gloves to reveal a pair of large, calloused hands. He began to work Hux, clumsily at first, but quickly seeming to guess– or more likely to read through the Force– what Hux liked. When Ren's close-cut nails raked gently over the flesh of his inner thigh, Hux had struggled to suppress a moan. Yes. The touch had been so unexpectedly nice. Even Ren's loud, filtered breathing had seemed exciting and stimulating instead of obnoxious.

 

It didn't last long. Hux gave a muffled cry, slumping against Ren's larger frame as his vision momentarily whited. Instead of the vague sadness and shame he usually felt after touching himself, he was filled with a sense of tranquility and satisfaction. He was about to start making himself presentable again when, without any warning, Ren's powerful arms closed around his waist, dragging their bodies together.

 

“What are you doing?” Hux gave an undignified yelp.

 

“You saved my life,” Ren said, as if that explained it.

 

“I was under orders.”

 

“Even so.”

 

“Well, I'd say you've adequately demonstrated your gratitude,” Hux sniffed. “And if we're quite finished here, I really must be getting back to the bridge.”

 

“Of course.” Ren let go. “But, whenever you want it again...”

 

He found he did want it again, and with increasing frequency, as the months went by.

 

They would make what Hux assumed was eye contact– though it was impossible to tell through that ridiculous mask– before retiring separately to the fresher, so as not to arouse suspicion. Hux eventually decided it was more prudent to invite Ren into his quarters, where they could have true privacy. They would repeat the same ritual, Ren always offering to work Hux to orgasm with his hands, Hux always feigning boredom and annoyance as he eagerly drank in the attention. The sessions were always short, and afterwards Ren would always spend a few moments awkwardly holding him before tearing away and excusing himself from the room.

 

It was a simple, satisfactory arrangement. There was no reason why Hux should have spoiled it by introducing unnecessary complications. And yet he'd gone and done exactly that.

 

“Wait,” he'd blurted out at the end of one of their sessions, just as Ren was turning to leave. “Why don't you let me return the favor this time?” He had tried to sound indifferent, casual, though inside he was kicking himself, confused and worried by his own sudden impulse towards generosity.

 

Ren froze. “No need,” he had said, without turning around.

 

“What's the matter?” Hux had asked, feeling strangely affronted. “Unless, of course, you haven't got anything down there. Do Jedi amputate them, or something?”

 

Ren snarled, storming towards the door.

 

“Wait,” said Hux, his cheeks coloring. “I just wanted to ask if there was anything I could do to reciprocate. That's all. Anything you might like?”

 

“Why?”

 

“Well,” Hux frowned. “I've got my honor to worry about, haven't I? Can't have anyone thinking I'm unfair in my transactions.”

 

“Who would even suggest such a thing, General?” Ren faced him. “Your honor is unimpeachable, I'm sure.”

 

“Look,” said Hux. “If you're just going to stand here and mock me, you can leave. Forget I ever offered–”

 

“A kiss,” said Ren, suddenly. “I want a kiss,” he repeated, as softly as his vocoder would allow.

 

“Alright,” Hux shrugged. “Come here.”

 

Ren took a step closer, his hands flying to the clasps on the underside of his helmet. This new helmet was similar to the old one, but for the addition of some strange chrome teeth that skirted the line between fearsome and ridiculous. He yanked it off, his impossible hair bouncing free, and clutched it to his chest with both hands. His eyes were huge with anticipation. This was the first time Hux had ever gotten a good enough look at them to really take note of their color, a glittering dark brown. Licking his lips, Hux craned his neck and pressed their mouthes together, the hard sphere of Ren's helmet keeping the rest of their bodies apart.

 

“Thank you,” Ren had whispered, jamming the foolish thing back on his head as he bolted from the room.

 

-

 

A single kiss. They had shared a single, closed-mouth kiss, and Ren had interpreted it as– What exactly? A vow of perpetual romantic commitment?Hux scrubs a hand over his face, begging for oblivion.

 

“I see now that I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions,” Ren huffs in misery. He shuffles fractionally closer so that Hux can feel the warm puff of his breath. “But at the time, it seemed so. Intimate,” he says, reddening. “Your presence in the Force was so. Bright.”

 

“What?”

 

“The kiss. You were just thinking about the kiss.”

 

“What was it you mentioned earlier, about concealing my thoughts from you?” says Hux irritably.

 

“Sorry,” says Ren. He frowns at a spot on the mattress between them. “You've seen me interrogate prisoners before. What's the first thing I always do?”

 

“I don't know. Strike a dramatic pose?”

 

“No,” Ren rolls his eyes. “I ask them a simple, straightforward question. I know they're not going to answer me. That's not the point. But as soon as I mention whatever it is they're hiding, it naturally springs to the front of their mind. That makes it easy for me to locate and extract the information. If I know what I'm looking for– If it's something specific– Then no one can stop me from finding it.”

 

“Except for the scavenger.”

 

“Well,” Ren looks away, miffed. “Yes. Except for her.”

 

“What about Luke Skywalker? Or General Organa? Are they not both strong in the Force? Can they resist your powers, the way she did?”

 

“Is _that_ what you want to talk about?” Ren gnarrs.

 

“No. Never mind.”

 

“If you'd let me explain: I can't just. _Read_ your mind, like a datapad. It's more complex than that. I can skim the surface of your thoughts, or I can tear down your shields in search of some specific information–”

 

“Hang on. My shields?”

 

“Yes. Everyone has natural mental shields. Some are stronger than others. And they can be strengthened further with training. As I was saying, I can penetrate your shields, but if I don't know what I'm looking for, it won't do me much good. Your mind is too vast. I could spend an eternity sifting through it in vain. If you were concealing something from me, and I didn't know about it to look for it, I would likely never find out. So, even if you can't prevent me from entering your mind, there are techniques you could learn, ways of structuring your thoughts, that could make it more difficult for me– or Snoke, for that matter– to read them.”

 

“How comforting.” Hux raises an eyebrow. “So I'm not _completely_ at the mercy of your mystical nonsense. Just _mostly_.”

 

“How can you call it 'nonsense' when I just used it to save your life?”

 

“That was only after Snoke used it to try and kill me. As far as I'm concerned, they cancel each other out.”

 

They lie side-by-side in silence for a moment, staring up at the ceiling. Hux swallows dryly, his heart beginning to race. Without the distraction of conversation, it's difficult to avoid thinking about what a perilous position he is in. Snoke wants him dead, and Snoke usually gets what he wants. Hux has scant knowledge of, and exactly no defense against his terrible, arcane powers. It rankles, but while Hux is proud, he isn't stupid. He knows what his best option is.

 

“Ren,” he ventures. “You fought him off, didn't you? After I lost consciousness?”

 

Ren's gaze lifts, startled. “I– Not exactly. It wasn't much of a fight.” In the low light, his eyes are the color of space. “I couldn't stop him from. Afflicting you. But I managed to grab your body and carry you away. I wasn't. Thinking straight at the time. I thought I was outpacing him. But now I think he _let_ us escape.”

 

“Why would he do that?” Hux is gripped by a sinking feeling he doesn't fully understand.

 

“I don't know. Maybe–” Ren's hands open and close against the mattress, straining to grasp something intangible. “Maybe he didn't think I'd be able to fix you. And maybe he assumed that after watching you die like that– I'd come straight back to him.”

 

“But you _did_ fix me,” says Hux. “So. Perhaps you are more powerful than he knows.”

 

Ren makes an inchoate noise at the back of his throat, reaching abortively towards Hux's face again.

 

“Go on,” Hux nods. “You keep wanting to touch me.”

 

“I–” Ren flinches as though caught in some untoward act. “Can I?”

 

“As long as you're careful. I'm not exactly in peak condition, mind you.”

 

“Oh,” he gasps. “I–” He slips a trembling hand behind Hux's ear, raking at his short hair.

 

“Ren,” Hux says urgently, meeting the knight's eyes. “Can you protect me from him?”

 

“Nnnn,” Ren whines, leaning unconsciously closer, laying both hands on Hux's head. “I don't _know_. But I _have_ to. I–”

 

“Listen to me.” Hux bares his teeth. “I have _plans_ , Ren. Such plans. And they don't include dying any time soon. Keep me alive, and in one piece, and in exchange, I promise you all the kisses you can handle.” He closes the gap between them, wincing as his tender, new skin comes into contact with Ren's coarse, woolen clothing. Careful of his empty, oozing nail beds, he presses a palm to Ren's cheek and mashes their lips together for a few seconds before pulling away. “Do we have a deal?”

 

Ren turns his face against the mattress, utterly overwhelmed. “ _My Love–_ ” he keens. He looks surprised and alarmed by the sound of his own voice, as if he doesn't mean to appear so desperate but somehow can't stop himself.

 

A thrill steals over Hux's entire body. Why couldn't he see the potential of this before? His mind is spinning with possibilities: Kylo Ren doing his bidding– Kylo Ren at his side–

 

“Has no one ever kissed you before?” he asks.

 

“No,” says Ren, without hesitation or shame. “No one.”

 

“Because Snoke forbid it?”

 

“No. Not expressly. But there weren't many. Opportunities. And I never sought it out.” He bites his lip, pensively. “I didn't think it was something I wanted. I didn't know it could be like this. Feel so good, I mean.”

 

“That _is_ why most people do it,” says Hux. “We are a social species. Our bodies are programed to recognize each other as... special objects.”

 

“I know _that_ ,” Ren huffs.

 

“But you weren't prepared for how it would actually feel,” says Hux, half-mocking, half-sympathetic. He can't believe how well this is going, how easy and natural it is to lounge in bed with Ren and chat. “Odd, that we can be so caught off guard by our on biology. The curse of sentience, I suppose...”

 

“Have you been with many others?” Ren asks, sounding more wistful than truly jealous.

 

“Oh no, not many,” Hux smiles. “I don't object to it entirely, but it's never been a priority for me. Like you, I've had more important things to worry about.”

 

“Can I– keep touching you?” Ren stammers.

 

“That depends. Do we have an agreement?”

 

Ren looks confused.

 

“Are you going to keep me alive or not?”

 

“Oh–” he breathes. “Yes.” He leans in, nuzzling his face against Hux's bare chest and inhaling deeply. Hux shivers at the feeling of Ren's nose teasing his sternum. “I'll keep you safe...” Ren whispers, like a child to its favorite stuffed animal. A comparison that doesn't exactly inspire confidence, but Hux is no position to be picky about his protection. “It will take him a while to find us,” Ren says, suddenly insistent. “As soon as I got us back to the Finalizer, I told Navigation we were about to be ambushed by the Resistance and ordered them to disperse immediately. They've got the whole fleet taxiing around at random. As long as we're in hyperspace, we're moving too fast for him to sense us. We'll need to stop and refuel eventually, but that at least buys us some time to come up with a plan.”

 

“Good thinking,” says Hux, reinforcing this praise with a gentle hand carding through Ren's hair. It's unappealingly tangled and sweaty at the moment, but that can be fixed. Of course, the same can't be said for his truly unfortunate ears, but even they aren't a total deal-breaker.

 

“I–” Ren gasps, squirming under Hux's petting hand. The way he trembles at the barest of touches makes something in Hux's gut twist with excitement. And for once, Hux is glad of his human body in all its hunger and weakness. Its soft, sensitive flesh, its overwhelming social urges. It's the one thing he has to offer Ren that Snoke doesn't. Because Ren, for all his supernatural power, is in the same sweet trap.

 

“Even if Snoke doesn't know exactly where we are, we can't be too careful,” Hux reasons. “As soon as word gets out we've turned on him– and it _will_ get out– he won't be the only one trying to kill me. There will be assassins, mutineers. Even aboard this very ship. I'll need you to remain at my side at all times.”

 

“Of course,” Ren swallows, looking serious. Trying to mask his desperate joy.

 

“In fact...” Hux trails off, bringing their faces mere centimeters apart, allowing their breathes to mingle. “They say you can sense threats, even in your sleep?”

 

“Yes. The Force does not sleep. Even when I lower my defensives, it is always with me.”

 

“Excellent. Then I would have you share my bed from now on.”

 

“You mean–” Ren chokes. “Every night? Would you sleep– In my arms?”

 

“Certainly. I can't afford to drop my guard anywhere else, now can I?”

 

Ren moves to scoop him up.

 

“Hold on,” says Hux. “Your clothes are irritating my skin. Why don't you remove them?”

 

Scrambling wordlessly to his feet, Ren unclasps the leather band that girds his waist and begins eagerly doffing his complex robes. When he is down to a pair of close-fitting black leggings however, he hesitates, hands worrying the waistband but not pulling them down.

 

“You don't have to strip all the way if it makes you so kriffing uncomfortable,” Hux rolls his eyes. “Stars, you're skittish. I thought you wanted me!”

 

Ren blushes furiously at this, lowering himself back into the bed without meeting Hux's eye. Once they're settled, Hux lays himself across Ren's broad chest, sighing at the contact, which is infinitely more pleasant without Ren's clothes in the way. Ren clutches Hux tightly about the waist, making quiet sobbing noises into his hair. They lie there soaking each other in, bare torsos sliding against each other– And space-gods if it isn't awfully nice! When they kiss, Ren's inexperience is obvious. Everything Hux does, Ren imitates a moment later, with more teeth. He seems devastated by Hux's caresses, his breath short, his color high, his muscled belly clenching in excitement. 

 

“You're so _smooth_ ,” Ren whimpers. “So warm. Your body is amazing.”

 

“It's fairly ordinary, actually. Yours is much more impressive.”

 

“Is it? Then. You don't mind all the scars.”

 

“They hardly detract from your figure.”

 

“My–? The way I'm shaped, you mean?” His eyelashes flutter bashfully. “I have the kind of shape people like.”

 

“Well, different people like different things,” says Hux. “That said, it's hard to go wrong with bulging muscles.”

 

“I'm shaped this way because of training. But I train to be strong. Not beautiful.”

 

“Oh, Ren,” Hux admonishes. “Strength _is_ beauty.”

 

His mind is reeling with half-formed plans. If he can actually somehow pull this off– tame Ren, remove Snoke, seize sole command of the Order– then letting Ren pretend they're in love will be a laughably small price to pay. Off course, he must make it subtle, convincing. Ren can read his emotions, so there's no point in laying it on too thick. “I understand how you feel,” he says, allowing just a shade of genuine warmth to fill him, knowing Ren will sense it. “Being so close to another human like this– I'm not used to it either.” And this is true enough. He can even feel himself swooning a bit at the sensation of Ren's hands around his narrow waist, broad thumbs stroking his ribs, though he's careful not to let himself get carried away. He must display a certain _tactical_ level of vulnerability. He must give in to these soft feelings just enough so that he can use them to control Ren, but not so much that he will lose control of himself. A challenge worthy of his considerable talents.

 

“There's just one thing I still don't understand,” Hux hums, feigning only casual curiosity. “Why did you approach me in the first place? You said this was something you didn't think you wanted. So what changed your mind?”

 

“It's not quite right,” Ren murmurs, “what I said before.” His dark eyes flash wetly in the half-light, and for a moment Hux is worried he's going to burst into tears. “I said I didn't know it would feel so good, but that's not really true. I think I was afraid it would feel _too_ good. That if I ever let it start, I wouldn't be able to stop it. Supreme Leader–” He scrunches and unscrunches his face in obvious anguish. “He never explicitly told me I couldn't touch people. But that didn't mean I could. He doesn't just. State things, that way. I'm supposed to _know_ what he wants from me. That's part of it. Even if he never said so, exactly, I recognized that this. Craving. For other bodies. Was one of the things I was meant to purge.”

 

“And then what? Don't tell me you actually fell for me because I saved your life, like some sort of holonet damsel.”

 

“That was only part of it,” says Ren, defensively. “It got my attention. Made me start to think of you differently. But mostly, it was my training.”

 

“Your training?” Hux repeats incredulously, certain he's about to hear a load of Force-gibberish.

 

“Yes. When I killed Han Solo, I believed it would finally cleanse me of my remaining weaknesses. But it didn't work,” Ren confesses, as if this were some sort of secret. Even Hux, with his complete lack of Force-knowledge, could tell Ren's confrontation with Solo hadn't gone remotely as planned. “Strength is freedom. Freedom from desire. But instead of becoming stronger, I began to feel the. Cravings. More powerfully than ever before. I returned to the Supreme Leader in disgrace, and pleaded with him to rid me of the source of my agony. But he only congratulated me for my victory and told me I was ready to complete my training. He didn't even seem to notice how weak I had become. I was so confused. I didn't know what to do. I opened my mind to him fully, allowed him to perceive my most shameful impulses, but instead of punishing me for them– He seemed almost to encourage them.”

 

“How do you mean?” Hux asks carefully, stroking Ren's chest. He senses that they have arrived at the heart of the matter. This is his chance to turn Ren's misplaced crush into an abiding loyalty, to nurse the poor, beaten beast back to health and thereby gain his allegiance.

 

“He allowed me to see visions of myself with a companion. A kind of shadow, that would wrap its arms around me– This shadow, this void, was the source of the pain. It tortured me with its weightless caresses, its wordless voice. He intended for me to seek one who could end my suffering, by taking its place. A real, human lover.”

 

“He said that?”

 

“No. I told you, he doesn't just say what he means. Without saying anything at all, he allowed me to understand that this was his intention.” Ren breathes in deeply through his nose, his jaw tightening in frustration. “I was devastated, at first,” he grinds out. “This went against all of his previous teachings. I thought I must be misinterpreting him. I feared I was losing my mind. But eventually... It became too much for me to bear. I wanted it so badly. And here he was, practically giving me permission– So I gave in. I went looking for a companion,” he gives a choking laugh, the weight of his clinging tears finally exceeding their surface tension and spilling them over his face. “You seemed like the obvious choice.”

 

“Well, lucky me,” Hux snorts.

 

“I'm sorry,” says Ren. “I didn't know he would hurt you. I made no effort to conceal my. Activities with you. And he continued to allow them. And it began to work.” He nuzzles his face against Hux's hair, as if momentarily too overcome with fondness to speak. “You let me touch you. You didn't even seem to mind it when I held you. And the more time I spent with you, the more I began to feel. At peace. The pain began to fade. What I had feared, that the Light would consume me, destroy me– It wasn't happening. You were bringing me such comfort, such pleasure, and instead of weakening me, it was making me feel stronger. It was the opposite of everything I had learned before. But I trusted in the Supreme Leader's wisdom. I saw that his guidance was good. And when at last you kissed me... It felt like the culmination of all my efforts. The Darkness and the Light flowed through me in equal measure. And I believed, in that moment, that with you as my Love, I could accomplish anything.”

 

Hux stares at Ren, stunned into silence. He struggles to wrap his head around the idea that what, for him, amounted to a few good hand-jobs and a single, awkward kiss was, for Ren, some sort of life-changing spiritual journey.

 

“When he called us both before him,” Ren continues, “I knew at once what it meant. I led you to your doom anyway, because I couldn't imagine defying him.” He smiles miserably. “In fact, even when I _did_ eventually defy him, I couldn't imagine it. I wasn't thinking about it. Just acting.” He presses his face into the join of Hux's neck and shoulder, shaking with silent sobs. “It was just another test, in the end,” he manages, his voice thick. “He let me fall in love with you, and I had never been so happy. I thought, _this_ was the enlightenment he spoke of. I thought, at last, I would be whole. But it was just another test.”

 

Hux kisses Ren's temple, sending him another pulse of warmth. “There would have been no end to the tests,” he whispers. “You've done well. You've made the right choice.”

 

Ren heaves his shoulders, squeezing Hux tighter. “Have I?” he asks. “Sometimes I wonder whether or not I've ever really chosen anything. How can you make choices when you don't know what's real? I got you all caught up in this, and you didn't even really want to be my Love in the first place. It was just another illusion. Something I talked myself into. Like everything else.”

 

“If it's all just an illusion,” Hux's muses, “Then we might as well make it a good one.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Ren sniffles.

 

Hux smiles, marshaling all his courage and guile. Now is his chance. His turn to write history, his turn to rule.

 

“Let's pretend I meticulously planned all this,” he says. “I wanted to eliminate the Supreme Leader, but I knew it would be impossible without your help. So I watched you, I observed your weaknesses. I waited for my chance, and when it came, I struck.” He puts a hand on Ren's cheek, coaxing Ren to look him in the eye. “But I miscalculated. As I set about insinuating myself into your heart, with the intention of using you for your powers to further my own purposes... My own heart began to stir. In spite of myself, I began to grow fond of you. I began to imagine a future with you at my side– You like this story, don't you Ren?” he grins. “It's _awfully_ romantic. Let's pretend it's true. Let's pretend we conspired together to overthrow him.”

 

Ren says nothing, kissing him desperately, drinking his breath, until giddy and light-headed, Hux falls asleep in the sorcerer’s arms, just like some sort of holonet damsel.

 

-

 

He dreams of a cramped, seedy cantina.

 

He is not himself, he realizes at once, but Ren. Or some child version of Ren. He is seated on a high barstool, his legs kicking in the air, sucking some fizzy pink beverage through a straw, not a care in the galaxy. Han Solo is standing next to him, scanning the room. He is expecting to see an old friend.

 

Solo curses under his breath in a language child-Ren doesn't recognize when a man approaches them at the bar. It's obviously not the person Solo was looking for. The man is grotesquely thin and covered in sores, and when he opens his mouth to speak, his words smell like death. He's a spice addict, Hux thinks contemptuously. Little Ren, who doesn't understand this, stares at the man's abscessed teeth in mute horror.

 

“Han Solo?” he croaks. “That really you?”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Solo waves him off, irritated and embarrassed by his presence.

 

“You wouldn't happen to have–”

 

“Look, buddy: I don't run that stuff anymore. Okay?”

 

The man grabs Solo's wrist in a sudden rage. “Don't give me that Hutt spit!” he growls. “You've gotta know somebody!”

 

“Hey!” Solo easily slips out of his skeletal grasp. “Back off. Not in front of the kid, huh?” He sighs, pity scrunching his brow, and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Let's say I know somebody.”

 

Later, back on the Falcon: A stiff pat on the head, a perfunctory “Sorry you had to see that, Kiddo.” Solo straps little Ren into his seat and hands him a plastic cup containing the rest of his soda. He doesn't understand– how could he?– that Ren has just looked into the spice addict's mind and glimpsed the black hole at the center of his being. Has just realized, for the first time, that the things which feel good can be the same things which destroy you. Ben Solo watches the syrupy pink liquid slosh back and forth as they enter hyperspace, unable to finish it. Suddenly suspicious of all enjoyments.

 

-

 

There's a flash of aluminum-fire white behind his eyes, and Hux is plunging from the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon through the dark void of space. Momentarily struggling to orient himself, he finds he is standing on a stone platform in the middle of a walled garden, beneath a blazing midnight sky. Lush, violet foliage blooms all around him and the stars bear down upon him like billions of unblinking eyes.

 

He is Ren again, but grown this time. He kneels on the platform, looking down at his enormous, gloved hands. He is distantly aware of the size and strength of Ren's body, and yet strangely numb to it. There is no satisfaction in flexing his powerful arms, in filling his mighty lungs with air. The strength seems to float somewhere outside of him, like a tool he can pick up and lay down, instead of an intrinsic property of his being.

 

“Supreme Leader!” he says, without raising his head. “I come before you ready to complete my training.”

 

“Indeed,” Snoke rumbles, approaching him along the garden path. Hux has never seen him walk before. And in fact, he doesn't seem to walk at all, but glides, his dark robes whispering over the ground like smoke. “We have much work to do, my child.”

 

Ren stands, raising his chin as though determined to accept a just punishment. He flinches as Snoke's spindly fingers seize his face, tracing the still-fresh scar the scavenger girl left across it. His touch is the most horrible thing Hux has ever experienced.

 

“A pity,” Snoke says, tilting his bulbous, gray head. “I wanted it _unmarred_.”

 

-

 

Hux is only briefly surprised the next morning to find Kylo Ren curled tightly around him, as if his body were a life-preserver and his bed a treacherous open sea.

 

Looking down at his declawed hands, he understands at once the reality of what has transpired between them. His skin feels much better, no longer so raw, but smooth and hairless in a way that makes him feel sort of alien and detached from himself. He wriggles out of Ren's grip, gazing down at his slumbering bedmate as he gets up to stretch. Ren's hair is even oiler and more tangled than before, fanning out around his head in a black halo.

 

He's beautiful, but you can't tell by looking at him.

 

Hux makes his way to the fresher, pisses, splashes water on his face. Tries not to vomit at the sight of a pool of his own rancid blood still drying on the floor. Throws on a soft, gray bathrobe. Lights himself a cigarette.

 

Yesterday, he had reams of paperwork to worry about. Today, he and Kylo Ren are staging a coup. They might have arrived at this point in the most absurdly roundabout manner imaginable, but this is where they've ended up nonetheless. He needs to start coming up with a plan, and fast. At the same time, he needs to ensure that Ren will remain dependent upon his affections.

 

Taking a long drag, he is reminded of a stray scene from his childhood on Arkanis:

 

He remembers wading into the shallow reefs to hunt for giant blue oysters. Their thick shells concealed tongues of sweet gore which he would slurp down raw, relishing their odd, slimy texture. But that was just a bonus. The real reason he hunted them was that, every once in a while, he would find a pearl.

 

He remembers learning that an oyster created a pearl to defend itself from parasites and foreign objects. It would layer calcium deposits around the irritant, rendering it smooth and harmless.

 

After Starkiller, Hux tells himself, his feelings for Ren had changed. Like grit in an oyster, his old irritation had produced a smooth pearl of fondness.

 

This is the kind of florid metaphor that would appeal to Ren. Hux imagines projecting the image of the pearl into Ren's mind and watching him melt under the spell of its romantic beauty. Tipping his ashes into the sink, he files the image away for future use.

 

He heads back for the bedroom, pausing in the doorway when he finds Ren awake and seated upright, still half-naked amongst his rumpled sheets.

 

“I was about to put on some caf,” he says casually, attempting to still his hammering heart. “Do you want any?” The future is yawning open before him, paralyzing him with its vastness. He strolls over to the low table across from his bed, brushing aside the sparkling dust of the shattered decanter, and grabs a couple of plastic cartridges filled with powdered bean. The cheap brewing machine he picked up once on shore leave doesn't make the best cup of caf, but it gets the job done, and its palatable enough.

 

“We're going to have to call together a meeting of the high command immediately,” Hux continues. “As in, this very morning. We can't let anyone in the fleet find out what happened from any source other than us. We need to get out in front of this as quickly as possible, so that we can be in control of the narrative.” He looks up from the table to find that Ren isn't listening to him at all, but is instead staring in apparent fascination at his own hands.

 

“What's wrong?” Hux sighs, taking his first sip of caf from a thin paper cup.

 

“I'm so _big_ ,” Ren marvels, blinking dumbly. He flexes his long fingers, feels along his sculpted belly and chest.

 

“What?”

 

“It's alright,” he says brightly. “It doesn't hurt. It feels good. It's a little bit scary, but I like it.”

 

Hux freezes, the paper cup halfway to his mouth.

 

“Oh, no. It's not what you're thinking,” Ren frowns.

 

“What do you think I'm thinking?” Hux croaks, his throat going dry.

 

“You're thinking I've. Mentally regressed. Somehow. You're worried you've been, ah, _fraternizing_ with, you know,” Ren laughs. “With a kid. But it's not like that at all. I remember everything. I lived through all of it. It's just that, it was through a kind of filter.” He stretches his arms out in front of him, turning them this way and that. “Or, no, that makes it sound like I was drunk or something.” He frowns thoughtfully. “It was at a kind of. Distance. It's like, the difference between reading a thermometer and knowing it's hot outside, and actually going outside and sweating. I was young... when I first pledged myself to Snoke's teachings. My body was different, back then. Much smaller. I knew that it was changing, getting bigger and stronger. I could even see it happening. But for some reason, I could never really feel it. Until just now.”

 

With slow, creeping horror, Hux puts his cup down on the table and douses his cigarette in the caf. The idea that Snoke has distorted Ren's sense of reality in such a way, in order to keep him feeling small and weak, fills Hux with such a sudden, fierce protectiveness, that he hardly recognizes himself.

 

“Will you touch me?” Ren asks shyly. “It's supposed to feel different, isn't it? When you're all grown up. You know. Fully developed.”

 

“Yes,” Hux breathes. He walks over to the bed, throws off his robe, and kneels on the edge of the mattress. Bracing both his hands against Ren's shoulders, he slowly slides their bare torsos against each other until he is seated in Ren's lap, his groin against Ren's belly. “It's supposed to feel different.” He rocks against Ren's pelvis, eliciting a strangled gasp.

 

“Take off the leggings, won't you?” Hux asks, gently biting at Ren's earlobe.

 

“ _Yes_ ,” Ren mouths, delirious with want, aching in ways he barely understands. Hux helps him peel them away, tossing them to the floor before diving back onto Ren's lap. He bows his head, nipping at Ren's chest before kissing him full on the mouth. He moans roughly, still unused to the alarming sensitivity and smoothness of his brand new skin. They have both, overnight, gained new, miraculous bodies. And the growing heat between them feels sacred and pure, like the dawning of a brilliant new age.

 

Romantic flights of fancy aside, Hux is under no illusions that this is going to end well for either of them. He thinks of Snoke, wreathed in silver vapor, plotting his vengeance against them from down in the dank catacombs of some distant world, and closes his eyes, determined to enjoy this moment while it lasts.

 

No more nonsense. Both their penises are trapped between their bellies, and Hux is growing uncomfortably hard. Breaking the kiss, he reaches between them in order to work them against each other. Ren whines, slinging his arms around Hux's neck and recapturing his mouth. And the pearl grows heavy in Hux's belly– Warm and smooth and heavy and bright. Ren sobs loudly as they both finish, clutching each other like its the end of the world, because maybe it actually is.

 

“Kriffing hells,” Hux gasps. “I need another cigarette.”

 

“Those things will kill you, you know,” Ren says earnestly.

 

“No they won't,” Hux grins. “If they do any serious damage, you'll fix me. Won't you, Ren?”

 

“You should call me Kylo. Ren isn't actually my name, you know. It's really more of a title.”

 

“Or,” Hux hums, teasing both hands through his hair. “I could just call you _my Love_.”

 

“Don't. Do that,” Ren frowns. “You're trying to manipulate me.”

 

“No,” Hux laughs, pressing a condescending kiss to Ren's forehead. “I'm succeeding.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on tumblr:  
> [theeascetic.tumblr.com](http://theeascetic.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

“That was an expensive decanter, you know,” says Hux, adjusting his hat in the mirror. “An antique. It belonged to the Commandant.”

 

“Sorry,” Ren mumbles. They are both fully dressed, and Ren is holding his helmet in his hands as if debating whether or not to put it back on. He seems disoriented and irritable, constantly shifting his limbs as if he doesn't know what to do with them anymore.

 

“Can't you, I don't know, magic it back together again?” Hux jokes. He wishes he could stop talking and start coming up with a plan. They're about to step into an officer meeting, perhaps the most important meeting of his entire career, and he has no idea what to say. Somehow he doubts 'This is a coup, who's with me?' is going to cut it. “You fixed _me_ , didn't you?” he rambles. “And I'm probably a great deal more complex.”

 

“Yes,” says Ren. “But your body is made up of cells. Each one contains a set of instructions for building the whole. The decanter isn't like that. It's made up of thousands of tiny grains of sand.” He rests his helmet in the crook of his elbow and raises his other hand, levitating the shards of crystal all over the table and floor into the air. They swirl around each other, a glittering tropical storm above Hux's bed. “The particles don't recognize each other. When they fall apart, there's nothing drawing them back together again. They don't want to build any particular shape, the way living cells do.” Ren, too, is rambling, filling the room with chatter in order to avoid his own thoughts. One of them is going to have to stop this nervous time-wasting and take charge of the situation.

 

One of them? Who is Hux kidding? He knows it will have to be him.

 

“Do you think you could have killed him?” Ren asks. “If you had had to?” He closes his outstretched hand into a fist and the floating shards of crystal collapse into a central point, forming a smooth, lead glass sphere about six centimeters in diameter. He summons it to himself, cradling it along with his helmet against his chest.

 

“Who?”

 

“The Commandant. Your father.”

 

“I dare say I would have,” says Hux, “if someone hadn't beat me to it.”

 

“I thought he died of an aneurism,” Ren frowns.

 

“Officially, yes. But rumor always had it he was poisoned. Probably by someone within the Academy.” Hux turns so that he is facing Ren from the side, taking in his uncanny profile. His features look more decided, less unformed than before, like a holo that just stopped flickering, the signal suddenly clear. This morning he awoke in a grown man's body and called it his own for the very first time. Hux wonders, with a pang, what that must be like.

 

“So much for breeding exceptional loyalty,” says Ren.

 

“Well, you must understand, this was all before the Order really took form. It was chaos in those days, assassinations were commonplace.” Hux brushes an imaginary speck of lint from his sleeve. “Besides, the Commandant was never the best executor of his own ideas.”

 

Ren raises an eyebrow. “That would be you?”

 

“Naturally,” says Hux, with a derisive snort. His chest tightens with the sudden, acute sensation that he is playing the character of himself a bit too forcefully. He is worried Ren will notice, and even more worried he _won't_ notice. Having just agreed to sell his body as a comfort object to some lunatic stranger with terrifying magical powers, he finds himself desperate to believe that he and Ren know each other quite well after all.

 

“Take this.” Ren presses the crystal sphere into Hux's hands. “I made it for you.”

 

“But you broke my decanter,” says Hux, palming it. “They cancel each other out.” The sphere weighs about a kilo and seems to hum warmly against his chest. It's not entirely transparent. Swirls of oil and specks of fiber and dust from the floor are trapped inside of it, suspended in the glass like miniature galaxies. Hux is reminded of the pearl. He swallows back inexplicable tears, overwhelmed by the wild sensation of seeing his own thought literalized. He is momentarily terrified of dropping the sphere, afraid it contains something other than dust, some precious manna that will escape from it like vapor if it shatters. Perhaps, like him, it is now permanently imbued with Ren's magic.

 

“Would you sense it, if someone was trying to poison me?” he asks.

 

“I might sense their intentions to do you harm.”

 

“You _might_?”

 

“I told you,” Ren huffs. “It's very complex. I can try to explain, but I'm not. Used to discussing such things with the uninitiated.”

 

“I thought you could see into the future,” says Hux, gesturing vaguely. In lieu of a plan, he is being intentionally unreasonable. “Or is that just one of those legends the Jedi spread about themselves in order to seem more powerful than they actually were?”

 

“The Force reveals many things to me,” says Ren, hunched and sullen, “but it does not render me omniscient. Foresight has never been my particular gift.”

 

“You don't say?” Hux taunts.

 

Ren glares at him, but gives no retort, rocking on his heels like a restless child. For reasons Hux can't fully fathom, Ren has allowed Hux to talk himself into a position of dominance, instead of making him beg not to be thrown upon the tender mercies of Snoke. Ren doesn't even seem to realize that he has all the leverage in this situation, that Hux's life is entirely in his hands, that he could be taking whatever comfort he wants from Hux's body without having to endure his insults. His professions of love notwithstanding, Ren has never been inclined to cooperate with Hux's plans in the past. Hux can't imagine what's changed, unless– The thought freezes him– Unless Ren somehow can't function without a master.

 

“My grandfather and my. Uncle. Experienced visions of the future,” Ren explains. “But my own power has always dwelled more in the present.”

 

“The mind-reading, you mean,” says Hux. “Are you exceptional in that respect?”

 

“Yes,” Ren breathes. “And when I healed you– I've never done anything like that before, but I think it was a version of the same thing. A different manifestation of the same ability.”

 

“How so?”

 

“I was able to save your body,” he says slowly, as though explaining it more to himself than to Hux, “because your mind wanted to live. The mind and body are. Not separate. Life is. A unity. I have always been especially attuned to this–” He makes a kind of circular gesture between their bodies. “The immediate physical world. The moment-to-moment thoughts and feelings of those around me. There are others whose strengths lie. Elsewhere.”

 

“If the mind and body are one and the same,” says Hux carefully, “how is it that you found yourself... separated?”

 

Ren stills. “Snoke always warned me against getting too caught up in the present. He said it was a weakness of mine. I think that's why he disconnected me from my body. To help me keep out distractions.” He looks down at his hands as he says this. They are gloved again, and covered to mid-palm by the pleated sleeves that extend past his wrists. He lays one hand lightly against his belly, as though realizing for the first time that he is tightly wrapped in fabric from the jawline down. Armored against sensation, sealed off from the world.

 

“It _was_ him then,” Hux says, too quickly. “He put some sort of spell on you.”

 

“It doesn't. Work that way.” Ren shakes his head. “I pledged myself to him. I _chose_ –”

 

“He put a spell on you,” Hux repeats, transfixed, as if reciting the counter-spell himself. “And I broke it.” He puts the sphere of glass and dust down on the table beside them, somehow knowing it won't roll away, and throws his arms around Ren's shoulders, pulling him into a kiss. Plucking Ren from the debris of Starkiller had felt like nothing, like following orders, but now, combined with this, it feels like a victory. It feels like he really _has_ saved Ren's life. Even if it was entirely by accident, the knowledge that he has done something to affect the realm of the Force and Ren's place in it bolsters him, mitigates his sense of helplessness. Coaxing Ren's mouth open, Hux swipes his tongue over Ren's palate, and Ren groans, slackening against him, grasping feebily at his clothes. “Later,” Hux says breathlessly, pulling away. “More, later.”

 

Ren nods, scrunching his lips again in that odd, silent simulation of speech. It's only one of several such tics Hux has noticed in him. He looks at his helmet again and seems to make up his mind, setting it down on the table so that it envelopes the crystal sphere instead of his head.

 

“You're not going to wear it, then?” Hux asks.

 

“It doesn't matter,” says Ren.

 

“Actually, it matters a great deal. We're about to walk out there and present ourselves to the officers of this ship as the highest authority in the First Order. If you decide to stop wearing a mask– Well, to start with, you'll settle a lot of bets about what species you are. But more to the point, you'll be committing yourself to a certain image.” Hux tilts his head, eyeing Ren critically. “Do you... even know what you look like?”

 

“Of course I know what I look like,” Ren scoffs. He takes a few steps towards the mirror. “There. Still ugly,” he laughs. “Even uglier now, with the scar.”

 

“You're not–”

 

Ren whips around. His hair is a gundark's nest, but it's nothing a wash wouldn't fix. The scar is... Dramatic, anyway. “You were saying?” he sneers.

 

“You're unconventional-looking, to be sure. But this is only about the sixth or seventh time I've ever seen your face and, well–” Hux smiles. “At this rate, I don't think I'll have any trouble acquiring a taste for it.” He closes the distance between them, reaching up to run his blunted fingers along Ren's jaw. “And the people out there... They think you're some kind of monster. Seeing you like this will probably come as a relief to them.”

 

“You mean that,” says Ren. It's not a question. He nuzzles Hux's hand, savoring the gentle touch. “You like my body. You don't mind my face.”

 

“Is that so hard to believe?” Hux skims his fingertips over Ren's mouth. “I think this is the right move, by the way. Not wearing the helmet. Humans have a kind of natural sympathy with other humans. And if it's humans versus Snoke, if that's the angle we're going with, it's better that people know you're one of _them_. Right now, they think you're one of _him_.” Hux glances at the chrono. “Time's up,” he says. “We have to go.”

 

But at first he doesn't move, transfixed by the image of himself and Ren in the mirror, looking like a proper pair. As if the mirror knows something he doesn't.

 

-

 

For a highly trained officer of the First Order, Lieutenant Mitaka has remarkably poor control over his facial reactions and is therefore an excellent way, Hux has found, to gauge the mood of a room.

 

“It has become increasingly apparent,” Hux is saying, “that Snoke's agenda no longer aligns with the interests of the Order. He has, therefore, been removed as Supreme Leader and is currently in exile.” His heart is hammering so hard it hurts to breathe. His hands are clasped at the small of his back to keep them from shaking. These are, Hux reminds himself, the members of his own immediate staff. He should be able to count on their personal loyalty. Once he's gotten them on board, he can begin to worry about the rest of the officiary, the rest of the fleet, the rest of the Order. When he got up this morning, his remade limbs felt strong and sure, but now his new knees are spongy and weak beneath him. Ren is standing about a meter away, watching him intently, and it feels as if Ren's gaze is the only thing keeping him upright. Like a collector's pin in an insect, keeping him where he can be seen.

 

Throughout Hux's speech, everyone in the room keeps stealing glances at Ren's uncovered face, though only Mitaka is artless enough to openly stare. This is, Hux thinks, a good sign. They are frightened by Ren, but also intrigued, and devoted to Hux, eager to go along with his program. Together, they are the Order's face, a far more potent symbol than Snoke has ever been. Yes, Hux thinks. They can sell this.

 

Colonel Kaplan, who is seated at the end of the long conference table near Hux, raises a gloved hand as though waiting for Hux to call on him, but then starts speaking anyway without invitation: “General, when you say he's in exile... Do you know where the Supreme Leader– that is, where Snoke is located?”

 

“No,” says Hux, eliciting a wave of urgent chatter throughout the room. “But as long as he concedes his authority and remains outside of First Order space, we shall have no quarrel with him.”

 

“Concedes his authority? To you, you mean?”

 

“To myself and Kylo Ren,” says Hux sharply.

 

“With all due respect, General,” Kaplan narrows his eyes, “do you think that's at all likely?”

 

“We must be prepared, of course, for the possibility that he will refuse to step down. In that event,” Hux squares his shoulders, “he will, unfortunately, become an enemy of the First Order. And he will have to be eliminated.”

 

“General,” Kaplan frowns. “And, again, I mean no disrespect. But, as I understand it, Snoke has the Force with him. Can he even be killed?”

 

“So does Kylo Ren,” Colonel Nai chimes in from the other end of the table. A scandalized hush passes over the room as everyone turns around to face her. It is more or less an open secret aboard the Finalizer that she and Colonel Kaplan are engaged in an illicit on-again, off-again affair. Off-again now, Hux gathers, from their seating arrangement. She stands up from her chair, letting her well-groomed nails click against the table.

 

Hux has known her long, if not exactly well, and harbors, in spite of himself, a kind of spontaneous affection for her. She was one of the Commandant's original cadets, the best and the brightest, always hovering around in the background of Hux's life like a distant older cousin. She has one of those faces that could plausibly put her anywhere between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five, though Hux knows her to be much closer to the latter. Her smooth, brown skin and large, dark eyes render her just this side of pretty– though, taken together, her features are plain. At the moment, her hair is fixed into a dozen or so skull-hugging, rope-like braids which are gathered together at the crown of her head in an elaborate knot. The style is not, strictly speaking, regulation, and even bears a whiff of Old Republic decadence, but it is entirely typical of Nai that she has somehow managed to get away with it nonetheless.

 

“Forgive me, I shouldn't presume to speak for you, Sir Knight,” she says, bowing her head in the direction of Ren. “But is the Force not with _you_ as well? Are you not Darth Vader's own flesh and blood?”

 

The room erupts into questions. Mitaka's jaw is practically on the floor. This fact about Ren is not quite as much of an open secret. Though his imitation of the Sith is obvious, his actual genetic relationship to Vader, and therefore to General Organa, is something only whispered about.

 

“I am,” says Ren, stepping forward. Taking his place, Hux thinks with a thrill, at Hux's side. “I am Darth Vader's grandson, and heir.”

 

“And you stand with the Order, against Snoke?” Nai asks, brazenly. “You renounce him as your master?”

 

Ren seems to struggle for a moment, his cheeks hollowing. “I stand with General Hux,” he says at last. “He is your true leader. Snoke doesn't. Understand human beings. He doesn't really know what you– what _we_ need. Hux is like you. He has feelings like you–” Ren stops himself, appearing to realize that he is addressing a conference room full of officers, and not actually having a private heart-to-heart with Colonel Nai. Hux is vaguely mortified, but unsure whether and how to intervene.

 

“And what about you?” Nai continues to press. “Are you a human being like us? Do you have feelings like us? Or does the Force make you different?”

 

“I–” Ren stammers. “The Force flows through all of us. It does not separate me from you, but rather connects me to you. It connects. All life. It connects Snoke too, but maybe, for him, it is different.” He takes a deep breath, releasing it too quickly. “I have feelings, too, yes. And I think they are like yours. Not like Snoke's. I don't know whether or not he can be killed but. When the time comes, I will stand with you. Against him.”

 

Nai smiles broadly, sitting back down in her chair. “Are you satisfied, Colonel Kaplan?” she asks, without looking away from Ren.

 

“Quite,” Kaplan purses his lips.

 

 

Hux feels a rush of warmth towards Nai. He tells himself it's because he needs to shore up his base, to know who his allies are, but this is only part of the truth. In fact, before he outranked her, he had always sort of looked up to her, as despite her sometimes heterodox behavior, she had enjoyed a brilliant career. He has some vague, possibly fabricated memory of her swinging him around on her arm when he was a child. He wonders now, though this is almost certainly pushing it too far, if she could maybe have been the one who taught him about oysters and pearls.

 

“Now,” says Hux, “unless there are any further questions...” he pauses, petrified someone will raise some objection, relieved when no one else speaks up, before continuing with false aplomb: “Our most pressing concern is to resupply the fleet.”

 

-

 

Somehow, everything is going according to plan, despite Hux's failure to actually come up with one.

 

They are able to purchase fuel from a caravan of weequay pirates on Florrum. Leaving aside his generalized distaste for them, Hux is forced to admit that, as trading partners, they are terrifically efficient and discreet. They do not accept First Order currency of course, but Hutt currency, which the Order keeps in reserve, is sufficient to buy their stock of fuel cells and their silence. This last part is important, as Hux is keen to keep the First Order's current, unstable circumstances unknown to the Resistance until he is ready to announce his coup to the galaxy at large, and on his own terms.

 

The weequay pirate queen resides in a palace of adobe and scrap metal. Her throne is made of empty crates that look like they were once used to move dental hygiene products. When she receives them, she is feeding black grapes to a large, tusked creature curled at her feet. Behind her, huge windows open up onto the desert vista of Florrum.

 

“My guests!” she says, clapping her hands together. “Are you comfortable?” She gestures towards a pair of massive, industrial fans. She is not apparently bothered in the slightest by the waste of energy caused by having the air conditioning on and the windows open at the same time. Indeed, she seems to relish it. She is carefree, magnanimous, utterly secure it her position of authority. Mistress of her domain. Empress of this insignificant moat of dust. When she smiles at him, Hux realizes his distaste for her is actually envy.

 

The weequay haggle with Hux for a while about the price of the fuel cells, but this is largely a matter of custom for them. They are eager to accept his money and, in their own barbarian way, they show him courtesy and respect, along with just the right amount of fear. The whole business only lasts a few hours, and concludes to everyone's satisfaction.

 

“What have we here?” asks the pirate queen upon catching sight of Ren, who hangs back during the negotiations. She leans forward, scrunching her leathery face, the decorative red cords that dangle from beneath her helmet clinking against each other with their wine-colored beads. “Is that a light saber, you've got? Is it real?”

 

Ren looks at Hux, as though waiting for instructions. When Hux just rolls his eyes, Ren approaches the queen. “Of course it's real,” he says, glancing around as if he's prepared to fight someone about it.

 

“Were'd you get something like that?” she laughs. “Did you kill a Jedi and take it? You know, I'd pay good coin–”

 

“I made it,” says Ren. “And it's not for sale.”

 

She blinks, adjusting her amber-tinted goggles. “You're not the famous Kylo Ren, are you? I thought he was supposed to be some sort of a zabrak with sawed-off horns.”

 

“I thought he was supposed to be a droid,” says one of her entourage, a tall weequay man with a single queue of black hair slung over his shoulder.

 

“That's ridiculous,” says the queen, throwing up her hands. “Droids don't have the Force.”

 

“How do you know?”

 

“I know a thing or two!” she shouts him down. She looks back at Ren. “You're a human, then? Bah! How disappointing!”

 

Ren colors, returning to his place just behind Hux's right shoulder without another word.

 

-

 

They retreat to the base on Illum.

 

There, they find food and supplies enough to last them months. The members of the skeleton crew maintaining the station immediately bow to Hux's authority, and are welcomed into the fold.

 

Standing on the frozen tarmac, flanked by scores of stormtroopers, his greatcoat whipping around him in the wind, Hux delivers a speech that is broadcast throughout the First Order. He calls Snoke their enemy. He declares himself the new Supreme Leader. He rants and raves about the Resistance. This footage will be in General Organa's hands in no time, and then the whole galaxy will know what has happened.

 

There was already no turning back, but now, on Illum, it finally hits him.

 

By the time he comes in from the cold to enter his new quarters, his hands are trembling. By the time he is able to rid himself of his greatcoat, hat, and gloves, he is hunched over the toilet, retching– Spitting thin bile when nothing else comes up. He hasn't eaten anything, he realizes, since his stomach was turned to sludge and then remade by Ren.

 

“Does he know where we are?” Hux cries. “Is he coming for us now?”

 

Ren stands in the doorway of the fresher, his hands opening and closing at his sides. “I don't know,” he says helplessly.

 

“What are we going to do when he gets here?”

 

“I don't know!”

 

“Damn it, Ren! What good are you to me if you don't know that?”

 

“Please,” Ren sinks to the floor against the door frame behind him, his head in his hands. “ _My Love_. I didn't know it would be this way. I thought he would let me keep you. I didn't know I would have to choose–” His legs sprawl uselessly in front of him. His shoulders shake with abrupt, hiccuping sobs. “I chose you. It was so hard, but I chose you. And then, you didn't even want me–”

 

Hux crawls across the burnished hematite tile and rams the top of his head against Ren's chest. “Fix this,” he orders, glaring into Ren's lap. “Fix this somehow.”

 

Ren pulls him into a clumsy embrace. “You're in charge now,” he offers. “Everyone believes in you. Everyone will follow you.” He nuzzles their wet faces against each other, finding Hux's mouth and initiating a sloppy kiss.

 

“But none of that matters, if Snoke can just magic it all away,” says Hux. “It's so wretchedly unfair! Have you ever even thought about that, Ren? Just how unfair it is that only some people have the Force?” He grips Ren's shoulders, drowning on dry land. “Or does having the Force exempt you from even noticing such things?”

 

“The Force,” says Ren, “has never really. Made me happy. But. Kissing you makes me happy.”

 

“How sweet,” Hux spits in his face. “My point still stands. It's unfair. It's so unfair it makes me want to die. Or kill you. Or something equally drastic.” He gives a loud, aggressive, bitter laugh. “This isn't exactly the way I envisioned it, you know? My ascension. First the Order, then the galaxy. Can you believe I really envisioned those things?” He lays his forehead on Ren's shoulder, breathing in Ren's warm, musky scent. “Maybe I'm the one of us who can tell the future. Wouldn't that be grand?”

 

“If you want the Force,” says Ren, softly, “you'll have it. My powers are at your disposal, my Love.”

 

“Do you expect me to take you seriously when you talk like that?” Hux snorts. “One moment your being as difficult as ever, and then the very next I'm your _Love_ and you'd do anything for me.”

 

“You _are_ –” Ren starts to say. He rakes his hands through Hux's hair, apparently searching his face for some kind of cue, before pressing their foreheads together.

 

“What are you doing?” Hux asks, exhausted.

 

“Trying to make you feel safe.”

 

“Damn it, Ren,” he snaps. “I don't want to feel safe. I want to _be_ safe.”

 

“I know. But it's the best I can do, for now. Alright?”

 

“Are you trying to be funny?”

 

“No,” Ren gives him a watery smile. “Yes. A little.”

 

They stare into each others' eyes, listening to the pipes groan as night falls and the temperature outside plummets. The Force, Hux reminds himself, may not be entirely inaccessible to him after all. In breaking Snoke's power over Ren, he has already managed to change something inside of it. He takes a deep breath, bracing himself against Ren's larger body. The very body that, in some obscure, dreamlike way that still doesn't make any sense, Hux has given Ren. Each of them has now freed the other from one of Snoke's curses. If they can't take him down together, he reasons, then no one can.

 

“Well,” says Hux. “He's not here yet. What do you want to do in the meantime?”

 

“I was hoping... maybe we could have sex,” says Ren. “I've never done it, and I'd like to try it at least once, before– Before everything–” He bursts into tears again.

 

“Look at me,” says Hux, waiting for Ren to comply before carrying on. “Enough crying. You want sex? Then we're going to have sex. And it's going to be wonderful. It's going to be the greatest thing you've ever felt. It's going to fix everything. In fact, it's going to end the war and bring order to the galaxy.”

 

Ren gives a low, rumbling sob that changes half way through into a laugh.

 

“And even if it doesn't,” says Hux. “Even if it doesn't fix everything, it's going to feel so good– It's going to feel so good, that afterwards, we can both die happy.”

 

Ren seizes Hux by the waist, and Hux feels himself float up from the floor in such a way that he can't tell whether Ren is using his magic or his muscles to set them both back on their feet.

 

-

 

The bed is extravagant by First Order standards, with soft, synth-linen sheets and room enough to comfortably accommodate about three people.

 

Hux rummages through his sparse luggage for a phial of amber oil, strips naked, and lays himself out on the mattress. Pouring some of the oil into his hand, he gets to work with a few fingers, careful of his ruined nail beds. They no longer hurt quite so badly, but they've begun to scab over in a pretty unsightly way, and anyway, they're still a bit sore.

 

He orders the lights down to fifteen percent and closes his eyes, trying to relax, listening to the sounds of Ren rummaging around in the fresher. He told Ren that if they were going to have sex, Ren would first have to clean himself up and do something about his hair. Stretching himself with one hand, he gives himself a few slow tugs with the other, trying to get himself in the proper mood. His throat burns from spitting up bile, and though his stomach throbs with hunger, eating is still unimaginable to him.

 

His breath shortens as he pictures Ren's broad back and long, tapering torso. He's only seen him fully naked the one time, so he might be getting a lot of the details wrong. He imagines the pink slash across his face and shoulder, the mass of scar tissue at his belly, and the evidence of dozens of other, smaller wounds. Why can't Ren erase them, Hux wonders, heal himself as he healed Hux? He remembers what Ren said about the body and the mind being a unity, and decides that probably Ren's mind doesn't want his body to be unmarred. The way he said he was ugly, Hux thinks, it seemed less like something Ren was ashamed of and more like a part of the story he was telling himself about himself. Hux can't decide whether he would erase Ren's scars, if he could. He tries to picture it, but the fantasy won't hang together for some reason. He tries focusing harder, imagines himself laying his hands on Ren's face, new hands with proper nails, and smoothing the scar away. At first it seems to be working– but then, to his horror, Hux realizes he can't control the healing power. Ren's little dark spots are disappearing, too– He doesn't want to get rid of those!– And before he can stop himself, Hux has erased Ren's features entirely, leaving nothing but blank skin behind.

 

Hux opens his eyes, panting.

 

A moment later, Ren appears in the doorway, naked except for a dark blue bath towel hanging low around his hips, his unconventional features intact. His skin is polished and glowing, his hair clean and blown dry. The puffiness around his eyes from crying has largely receded. He floats into the room, his footsteps uncharacteristically quiet.

 

“You're already naked,” he says.

 

“Yes.” Hux is leaning back on his elbows, holding himself off the mattress at a forty-five degree angle. “Is that a problem?”

 

“I just. Thought I was going to take your clothes off.”

 

Hux almost says, _You can do that the next time_ , but stops himself, unsure if there's ever going to be a next time. Instead, he leans back, spreading his legs, and acts like he isn't being torn him apart by the thought that they're only two seconds into this, and he's already ruined Ren's first and maybe only chance at sex. “In order to better facilitate things,” he says mildly, “I took the liberty of preparing myself. I trust you know what that means?”

 

“I know what it means,” Ren glares at him. “I'm inexperienced, not stupid.”

 

“Hmmm... Debatable,” Hux drawls, spreading his arms luxuriously. “Come here,” he says.

 

Ren drops the towel, revealing that he's already half hard, and makes his way over to the bed. He climbs on top of Hux, planting his arms on either side of Hux's head, and cranes his neck as if to kiss him, but then stops short. “Pleasure is like a kind of pain that you want more of,” Ren says. “I remember thinking that.”

 

Hux thinks of the spice addict from his dream– Ren's memory? He places his hands on Ren's hips. “Are you ready?” he asks. His blood is pounding in his ears. He's never felt this way about sex before. All of a sudden, he's aching to have Ren inside of him.

 

Ren nods once. He brings their mouths together shyly, and Hux guides his pelvis into place. There's pain as Ren starts pushing into him. “Careful,” Hux hisses. “Try not to rip me in half, _my Love_ ,” he mocks.

 

“Sorry.” Ren lowers his gaze. “Am I doing it wrong?”

 

“I've never been with anyone as big as you,” says Hux. “You have to give me a few moments to adjust, that's all.”

 

“Is that. A good thing?” Ren's face scrunches in sheepish interest. “The fact that I'm bigger. Do you. Like that? I mean,” he continues, over-explaining the question, “I know that's the cliché. But, I don't assume everyone has the same taste.”

 

“It matters a great deal more to me what you do with it,” Hux grins lasciviously.

 

Ren gasps, sliding the rest of the way in. “Are you issuing a challenge, General?” He moves against Hux, and inside of him, kissing hungrily at his face, and neck, and chest, and _oh–_ It's nice. Hux can feel Ren reading him through the Force and adjusting his movements accordingly, and maybe a part of Hux even thinks this is cheating. But _oh._ It's _so_ nice. They lap at each others' mouths, their hips grinding slowly but with insistent pressure.

 

Hux is lying on his back, trying to relax and enjoy this, when something a little bit strange happens. Suddenly, he feels himself rising off the mattress through no action of his own. Ren's chest, he realizes, is pulling on his own chest like a magnet, drawing him in, and as soon as they touch, Hux finds himself stuck. He struggles against it, but the pull is irresistible. He can slide and rub against Ren's skin, but he can't put even a millimeter of distance between them. Hux is caught off guard by an intense flash of arousal, as if a lightning bolt has struck him in the belly. He's seen Ren use telekinesis through his hands on numerous occasions, but it's never occurred to him to think that every other part of Ren's body might have the same capability. The mere thought of it makes him lightheaded with desire.

 

“I'm sorry–” Ren stammers, noticing Hux's helpless squirming and unceremoniously dropping him so that his head bounces against the mattress. “I didn't mean to do that. I lost control for a moment.”

 

“Wait,” Hux breathes. He can feel his face coloring with embarrassment, but he pushes it aside. This is no time to be shy about what he wants. It could very well be the last sex, the last pleasant experience, of his life. “I actually– I liked that,” he says.

 

“What?” Ren looks confused and a little dismayed.

 

“I liked being stuck to you like that,” says Hux. “I liked not being able to pull away. It was... exciting. Do it again.”

 

“Really?” Ren gives him a crooked grin. “Are you sure?”

 

“I'll tell you when I want to be let go.”

 

“Oh,” Ren breathes. Burying himself deep inside of Hux, he draws Hux towards him again with his inexorable magic so that they are stuck chest to chest and belly to belly, trapping Hux's erection between them. “I like it, too,” Ren says, tilting his head for another kiss.

 

Hux groans into Ren's mouth, rolling his pelvis and wrapping his legs tightly around Ren's hips so that he is essentially riding Ren upside down, suspended in the air by the Force. This bliss only lasts about a minute, however, as Ren's arms begin to shake from supporting both of them and he collapses on top of Hux, whimpering and sighing into Hux's hair. Hux growls, rolling them over so that he is on top and tries to lift his chest, bracing his arms against Ren's shoulders, only to find himself still hopelessly stuck to Ren's skin.

 

“I won't let you go until you tell me to,” says Ren. “You don't even have to say it out loud. You can just project the thought at me. But until then, I'm going to have to assume you want to stay like this forever.”

 

“Do _you_ want to stay like this forever?” Hux asks.

 

“You were right,” says Ren, not answering the question. “This is the best thing I've ever felt. I mean, I still don't know if it's going to save the galaxy–”

 

Hux starts riding him hard, so that Ren's words are cut short by his moans. He buries both his hands in Ren's clean hair, glorying in its silky fullness, until Ren is mindlessly nuzzling his head against the touch, delirious with pleasure.

 

“Oh–” Ren cries out, his eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks like black moths against a gray sky. In the semi-darkness, his skin is a cool slate color and his muscles seem hewn from stone. He looks beautiful, Hux thinks, for the first time without any qualification. Even his ridiculous ears look perfect, like two pale crescent moons peeking out from behind the storm cloud of his hair. Hux flattens them against Ren's head under his palms, and sighs, wanting to stay like this forever.

 

“ _Oh–_ ” Ren sobs. “You feel so real!”

 

“I am real,” says Hux, though he hardly feels it these days.

 

“I know that,” Ren grunts, his eyes scrunched in mixed pleasure and torment. “I mean your body feels real. It feels like you're really touching me.”

 

“I _am_ really touching you!”

 

“I _know._ ” Ren struggles to articulate himself, writhing under Hux's petting hands. “I mean I can actually _feel_ it.” His eyes snap open and he seizes Hux's hips, driving into him while making little, wounded noises. He seems to be nearing orgasm, looking desperately to Hux for guidance, as if he doesn't know what's happening to him. “Please–” he whines, his eyes rolling back and his mouth quivering.

 

“Yes,” says Hux, clenching around him, trying to make him come undone. “I know it's a little frightening. Pleasure is like pain, in that way. It strips us of our pretensions, reduces us to animals.”

 

“Why are you still talking?” Ren groans.

 

Hux grins. “I guess I'm clinging to my pretensions.” He gives a muffled yell as Ren sucks him into a kiss with his magic, their lips magnetically drawing together. He struggles, only to find his tongue firmly stuck in Ren's mouth. Unable to speak, he can only moan. In silencing him, Hux realizes, Ren has effectively neutralized his greatest weapon, rendering him utterly helpless. Under other circumstances, this would be terrifying, but Ren said he would release Hux whenever he wanted to be released, and Hux finds he believes him. The feeling of simultaneous security and vulnerability as Ren pushes and pulls his hips while holding him in place with the Force is unlike anything else Hux has ever experienced, and it's enough to make him come hard, soiling both their bellies.

 

Ren comes barely a second later, as if in direct response, separating their mouths in order to scream.

 

“Alright,” Hux pants. “Let me go now.” Finding himself free to move around again, he climbs out of bed on shaking legs and grabs Ren's discarded bath towel, thoroughly cleaning himself before wiping hastily at Ren. He flops back down onto the mattress, rolling over to lay his head on Ren's chest. As his heart rate slows, he realizes that the fear has begun to ebb out of him, allowing him to genuinely relax for the first time since before Starkiller. They _are_ going to have sex again, he decides. And by setting a series of incremental goals, starting with this one, they are going to defeat Snoke and bring order to the galaxy.

 

Ren starts rubbing Hux's back with one hand, raising the other into the air and turning it over and over.

 

“What is it?” Hux asks.

 

“I just– I love how big I feel now,” Ren marvels. “It feels so real. I mean. It feels like this is how I'm supposed to be.” He squeezes Hux around the middle. “And I love how small you feel in my arms.”

 

“I'm not _that_ small,” Hux protests. He loves it, too.

 

Hux thinks of Snoke– his pewter eyes and papery skin, his weightless glide– and wonders if there are any other beings in the galaxy like him, any other creatures of air, and light, and dust for him to share his body with. If so, he wonders what sex must be like for them. He can't imagine it's anywhere near as nice as what he and Ren, limited as they are by their crude flesh, have just given each other.

 

“That was easily the best sex I've ever had in my life,” says Hux, watching Ren's large, purplish penis soften against his thigh.

 

“Me too,” Ren deadpans.

 

Hux buries his face against Ren's chest, laughing. Laughing silently, and much too hard, like he's high on spice. He drapes an arm across Ren's torso, lazily thumbing the curve of his waist. His mind is spinning with plans again. With Ren's magical body as his weapon and shield, he thinks, he might actually get to fulfill them. “The Resistance will know what's happened soon, if they don't already,” he says, sobering. Leaving Snoke aside for the time being, he'd rather talk about a threat he knows how to handle. “An abrupt change of leadership almost always implies vulnerability. They will see this as their chance to strike at us with all they've got.”

 

“And what if you win it all?” Ren yawns, stretching his arms before wrapping them around Hux again. “What are you going to do with it?”

 

“What kind of a question is that?” Hux asks, snuggling closer.

 

“You told me you had great big plans. Plans for what?”

 

“Peace, order, harmony. A better society. Do you even listen when I speak?”

 

But Ren doesn't answer, because he's already fallen asleep. And soon, Hux follows him there.

 

-

 

He dreams of a giant hangar bay, filled with TIE fighters.

 

He is busily repairing one of the them. He hunches forward on his workbench, mopping the sweat from his brow with a grease-stained rag. He starts at the sound of echoing footsteps, terrified of being pursued for some reason. He is hiding from someone, he realizes, but he can't remember who. Heart racing, he peeks out from his spot between the wafer wings of the TIE fighter. “Oh,” he says, relieved. “It's only you.”

 

Ren stands over him, arms folded across his chest. He looks positively radiant, his hair pulled back into two braided loops, a long cape of red velvet draped across his shoulders, his lightsaber swinging at his hip. Instead of his usual nerf wool robes, he is dressed in an elegant kimono and leggings of slippery black silk. Hux gets up from the bench, wiping his hands on the cloth, not wanting to get any grease on Ren's beautiful new clothing when they embrace.

 

“You were raised in this world,” says Ren, “so you might not even realize it. But some of the things our enemies say about the First Order are actually true.”

 

Hux sighs, disappointed. He thought they were going to pet and kiss each other, not argue about politics. He knows, of course, that Ren grew up in the Republic, but he didn't think it was going to be such an issue in their relationship. “Are you talking about the stormtrooper program? I know you've never approved of it.”

 

Ren pouts. “I think it's cruel that you don't let them have names.”

 

“You _would_ think that, wouldn't you?” says Hux. “As a man with two names. An embarrassment of riches. Is that it? Well if you'd rather live under the Republic, a regime that tolerates slavery–”

 

“The stormtroopers _are_ essentially slaves.”

 

“You're wrong, Ren.” Hux takes a step towards him, growing angry. “You don't have any idea what you're talking about. Slaves belong to capricious masters who can dispose of them however they like. The stormtroopers belong to the First Order. To each other. They have a purpose, a place in the galaxy. They are each a part of something great. Slaves don't have anything like that.”

 

“That's true,” Ren concedes. “But at least slaves have names.”

 

“Look,” Hux tosses the filthy rag aside and throws up his hands, “that's just the way things are. It was the Commandant's idea, you know. Giving them numbers. Not mine.”

 

“I thought the _whole thing_ was his idea,” says Ren, tilting his head so that his hair loops sway to one side. “I thought you were just his executor.”

 

“Do you want to fight with me, Ren? Do you think you know better than anyone else how the galaxy ought to be run?”

 

“We're not fighting,” Ren frowns. “We're having a discussion.”

 

“Oh, really? Is that what they call it in the Republic? You know, entire civilizations have perished while the Senate sat around having discussions.”

 

“You don't have to get so defensive, my Love,” says Ren. “If you're going to rule the galaxy, you're going to have to learn how to take constructive criticism.”

 

“Stars, you sound just like General Organa!” Hux expects this to provoke Ren, and is surprised when Ren just laughs and takes him by the hand.

 

“If it's going to upset you so much, we can talk about it later,” Ren says, leading him out into the middle of the yawning hangar bay. He puts his hands on Hux's shoulders, and Hux notices that his fingernails are varnished with chrome paint. “There's no time anyway. We've got to get you ready right now. You're a complete mess.” He indicates the rumpled mechanic's jumpsuit Hux is wearing.

 

“Ready for what?” Hux asks.

 

“For your coronation, silly,” says Ren. Hux didn't notice it before for some reason, but the hangar bay is filled with thousands of pink balloons and strewn with kilometers of crepe paper, as if they're expecting an enormous party. “You can't go dressed like that.”

 

Ren kisses him, and pleasure floods like yellow starlight throughout his entire body, gilding his bones. When Ren pulls away, Hux finds himself dressed in his customary uniform and greatcoat, impeccably pressed, his hair neatly parted, his hands manicured and scrubbed clean. “There. You look perfect, my Love,” Ren smiles. He places his powerful hands, with their flashes of chrome, on either side of Hux's waist and levitates them both into the air where they waltz together among the balloons.

 

“Shouldn't there be music?” Hux asks, looking down at the floor hundreds of meters below them. Certain Ren won't drop him, he feels no fear.

 

“There _is_ music,” says Ren. “Can't you hear it.”

 

“No. I don't hear anything,” Hux shakes his head. He feels a flash of anxiety in the pit of his stomach. The fact that Ren, with all his abilities, can hear music which Hux can't shouldn't really be that surprising, and yet something deep inside of him is telling Hux this is a very bad sign.

 

Before he can ask Ren about it any further, however, they are alighting back on the ground and Ren is turning away from him. The doors of the hangar bay are opening, and hundreds of stormtroopers are marching inside in flawless formation. Ren holds himself like some sort of Naboo royalty, clutching his velvet cape with one hand, and giving them a stately wave with the other.

 

“Allow me to present to you His Excellency, Emperor Hux!” Ren thunders, his voice filling the enormous space. Out of nowhere, he produces what looks like a ring of fire, placing it around Hux's head like a crown. Instead of burning him, it merely tickles, tousling his hair like tongues of wind. When Hux turns to face them, the troopers all drop to one knee in perfect unison.

 

“Long live Emperor Hux!” they chant.

 

Hux opens his mouth, feeling like he ought to say something. Why didn't Ren tell him about this ceremony earlier? he wonders, annoyed. If he had known about it in advance, he would have prepared a speech.

 

Before he can think of anything, one of the troopers breaks rank and starts running at him. A clumsy assassination attempt? He looks to Ren, counting on him for protection, but Ren just smiles and shakes his head. Sure enough, instead of trying to kill him, the trooper throws themselves at Hux's feet and pulls off their helmet.

 

“FN-2187?” Hux asks, recognizing his face after a moment.

 

“Emperor Hux!” he cries, throwing up his hands in supplication. “I betrayed you. And worse, I abandoned my brothers and sisters. Please, can you ever forgive me?”

 

“Of course,” says Hux, his heart warming. “Welcome home. All is forgiven.” He offers the trooper his hand, pulling him to his feet so that they are standing and facing each other. “But why did you leave us in the first place? It never sat right with me.”

 

“I was afraid,” says FN-2187. “And alone, and in so much pain.” His face is so sweet, Hux can hardly stand it. Big, dark eyes that sparkle like space. Soft, kissable lips. Just like Ren, Hux thinks. Maybe that's his type.

 

“I understand,” says Hux. “Sometimes, I feel that way, too.”

 

“A lot of us do,” says FN-2187, looking over his shoulder at the other stormtroopers. “The Commandant was a cruel father to us. He made us this way.”

 

Hux frowns. “The Commandant has been dead for years.”

 

“Yeah, but he still hurts us. He still hurts us every single day.”

 

“I–” Hux takes a step back, overwhelmed. He can feel the gaze of every single stormtrooper bearing down on him. “I'm sorry,” he says. He wishes there was something he could do to make this beautiful young man smile, to take away his pain. Glancing around, he notices that the canopy of pink balloons has begun to drift down so that their white strings dangle just within reach. Standing on tiptoe, he grabs one and offers it to FN-2187. “Take this,” he says urgently. “It belongs to you.”

 

“Thank you,” FN-2187 nods, turning to present his balloon to the other troopers. “Look what I've got!” he calls, waving excitedly. Hux didn't notice it before, but the word “Finn” is written on the balloon in black marker. The troopers stand up and cheer, taking off their helmets and throwing them to the ground. Their faces are young and vibrant, covering the full spectrum of human colors. Some are scarred or burned from combat, but every single one of them is beautiful.

 

“Balloons for everyone!” Hux calls, raising his fist in the air.

 

The stormtroopers erupt into applause.

 

Hux feels Ren's arms close around him from behind, pulling him against Ren's chest and draping the red cape around both of them like a blanket. “My Emperor,” Ren whispers into his ear, making Hux shiver. When he tries to look back at Ren, the crown of fire thwarts him. His peripheral vision is blinded by its undulating fingers of light.

 

-

 

He shakes his head, trying to banish the blue and violet spots that swim before him.

 

When his vision returns, he is dressed in the dirty, utilitarian clothes of the weequay pirate queen, seated on her throne of toothpaste crates, and holding a giant sugar cone topped with three scoops of pink ice cream. He licks it, trying to eat it before the heat causes it to melt down his arm. The fans roaring behind him offer only partial relief from Florrum's punishing desert environment.

 

Instead of the tusked beast the queen kept, Ren is curled at his feet, wearing nothing but a white loin cloth and a black leather collar. He rubs himself against Hux's legs like a cat, hungrily seeking affection. Hux reaches down to pet his hair.

 

“Would you like some?” he asks, holding the ice cream cone near Ren's mouth. Ren laps at it gratefully, closing his eyes in pleasure, and Hux mashes the ice cream into Ren's face, covering him in a sticky pink mess. Confused by his own action, Hux feels a stab of guilt, but Ren doesn't seem to mind. He beams adoringly up a Hux, ice cream dripping down his cheeks, and even clinging to his eyelashes.

 

“Now we're going to have to clean you up,” says Hux, bending over to kiss him and taste the cream and sugar on his lips. They rub their faces against each other, getting ice cream everywhere, but neither of them seems to mind.

 

“Hux–” Ren groans. “Hux, you've got to stop me.”

 

“What's wrong?” Hux asks, pulling away.

 

Ren grabs something from up off the floor behind him and shakes it in front of Hux's face. It's the end of a black leather leash, connected to his collar. “Take this,” he cries. “Don't let me go! You've got to stop me!”

 

Hux's heart plunges into his stomach. Something in Ren's face has changed. The air is rushing out of the balloon and the gauzy fantasy is evaporating. The world around them is still vague, but Ren himself has solidified, snapped into focus. Confident, laughing Ren, decked in red velvet with chrome nails, and mewling, naked pet Ren, happily curled at his feet, were both flimsy manifestations of his own desires, both products of his own imagination.

 

But this tormented, begging Ren is the real one. And he has somehow entered upon Hux's dream.

 

“Take it,” he says, tears running down his face, cutting trenches through the ice cream. Hux tries to grab the end of the leash but it flies out of his hand, wrenching Ren away from the foot of his throne by the throat. The loop of leather floats through the air as though in the hand of some invisible person, dragging Ren with it across the floor. The weequay guards throughout the room do nothing to help them. They are just shadows, extras in Hux's dream. The invisible hand on the other end of Ren's leash, however, is real.

 

“Hux!” Ren screams, struggling for breath as the collar chokes him. “You've got to wake up! You've got to stop me!”

 

Hux leaps to his feet. “I don't know what to do,” he says.

 

“You've got to wake up!” Ren pleads.

 

While Hux stands there motionless, Ren is dragged kicking, and thrashing, and choking from the room. His screams continue to echo down the halls of the pirate queen's adobe palace, until at last they fade away beneath the rush of the air conditioning.

 

-

 

Hux opens his eyes.

 

He blinks at the chrono on the table beside him. Depending on how one wants to count it, it's either very early in the morning or very late at night. Through the viewport, he can see the stars, along with the stunning Polar Lights, for which Illum is famous. He's still tired and pleasantly sore from the sex. He stretches his arms, rolling over. His heart stops.

 

Ren is gone.

 

Scrambling to put his clothes on, Hux leaves his quarters and tears down the hallway while still wrestling himself into his greatcoat. Stormtroopers on zeta shift pass by him, averting their gazes. Not even daring to ask him what's wrong.

 

He ducks into a turbolift which leads to the exterior of the cliffside base, mashing the ground floor button thirty times in as many seconds before storming out into the bone-shattering cold. The floor of the garage where the snow speeders are kept has been salted, but the walkways outside are covered in black ice, and its a miracle he doesn't fall flat on his face while sprinting across them.

 

He emerges into the open air, the freezing wind blasting him in the face. He didn't even think to bring his hat, much less a pair of snow googles. He holds a gloved hand over his eyes, squinting into the distance. The sky is a roaring expanse of dark-silver, leaping with brilliant pink auroras of ionized dust. The horizon is a single, vanishing, phlox-bright line. Hux's eyes burn as he searches the frozen landscape in front of him for some sign of life. His heart starts beating again.

 

Ren is standing out on the tarmac, his black vestments whipping around him, his dark figure buffeted by flurries of sugar-fine snow.

 

“Ren!” Hux calls, stumbling towards him over the ice, gasping breaths leaving him as puffs of steam.

 

“Do you hear that?” Ren asks him, without even turning around.

 

Hux strains his ears, catching nothing but the droning of the wind. “No. I don't hear anything. Ren, listen–”

 

But Ren doesn't listen.

 

“He is calling to me,” he says. “I have to go. He is the only one who can show me how to fulfill my destiny.”

 

He starts walking away from Hux, towards that unreachable, glowing pink line in the distance.

 

“Ren!” Hux yells. “Stop this. Come back!” He reaches for his blaster, thinking wildly of shooting Ren in the leg to stop him from going, but before he can even make an attempt, a tendril of Ren's power reaches back to rip the weapon from his hand and flings it a hundred meters away into a bank of snow. He can feel Ren's protection peeling away from him, leaving him shivering alone in the middle of the tarmac. Without the warm blanket of Ren's power surrounding him, he is nothing more than a soft, defenseless human body, a tongue of oyster flesh, stripped of its shell. “ _Ren!_ ” he screams after the retreating figure until he can't scream any more, the cold air turning his lungs brittle and stealing his voice. It's only a kind of inertia that keeps him on his feet.

 

He thinks of running back to the garage and taking one of the snow speeders, but he knows it would be pointless. For one thing, he would almost certainly freeze to death. For another, something deep inside is telling him that Ren has gone where he can't follow.

 

He staggers back inside, up the turbolift, and down the hallway to his quarters in a daze, collapsing in a heap on the floor the moment the pneumatic door closes behind him. His hands and feet are numb, possibly frostbitten, and for a moment he expects them to start rotting away again, without Ren there to keep them intact. As he struggles to bend his stiff fingers, his eyes brim with tears of frustration. For all his fatalistic talk, he now realizes, he really had been counting on Ren to save him. He feels sick, remembering how he congratulated himself for breaking Snoke's spell. How presumptuous, how ignorant of him to think that he could somehow reach into the shadowy realm of the Force and rearrange the universe just by making Ren come.

 

His stomach flips when it occurs to him that, just maybe, he has one last recourse. He crawls on his hands and knees towards his partially-unpacked luggage, tearing through it until he finds what he's looking for: the crystal sphere. When Ren gave it to him, the morning after they had first lain together, it had seemed to contain within it the essence of that room at that exact moment in time. It had felt like a promise to take him back there, if he ever lost his way. He cradles it against his heart, rubbing it in the frantic hope that it will allow him to summon Ren like some sort of djinn. But the crystal doesn't hum in his hands the way it seemed to before. It just sits there, an inert lump of sand and dust, having lost its magic. His heart shatters.

 

It was never magic in the first place.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on tumblr:  
> [theeascetic.tumblr.com](http://theeascetic.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take notice of the new tags. I have added some warnings for this chapter.

Hux spends a few hours trying to fall back asleep before deciding it's not going to happen. He is trapped, at least for now, in this reality. It's still dark outside when he heads for the officer's mess in search of something to eat. In spite of everything else that's happened, his hunger has finally reached a point where it can no longer be ignored.

 

The mess is empty. Besides the stormtroopers patrolling the hallway outside, there's probably no one else in this sector of the base at the moment. He orders a droid at the serving counter to make him some food. Unsure what state his digestive system might be in after suffering the meddling of two different Force-users, he opts for a cup of dark tea and a bowl of the bland, nutrient-fortified puls which the stormtroopers are required to eat for at least one of their three daily meals.

 

He sits down on one of the long, durasteel benches, dropping his cup and bowl on the table in front of him with a clang. For a moment, his vision blurs with tears of rage, and he is seized by the desire to flip the table over, but he masters this impulse. All the furniture in the room is bolted to the floor, anyway. This would be no obstacle to Ren of course, but Hux, it turns out, is a mere mortal. No matter how much he may feel like doing it, he doesn't have the privilege of throwing a Ren-like tantrum.

 

He takes a swig of his tea, sighing as it warms him. He spoons some of the puls into his mouth, forcing it down. It's not particularly appetizing, but soon his hunger is taking over and he is shoveling it into his face with a kind of furtive abandon, ashamed despite the fact that no one's here to see him looking so undignified. Finishing the rest of his tea in one gulp, he stares into the plastone cup, fathoming its empty bottom. Forgetting his lack of fingernails, he tries to use his pinky to dislodge a bit of grain germ stuck between his teeth. He pokes at it with his tongue, but it still won't come loose. His mind is an excruciating blank.

 

Last night, he was giddy with plans. But all of his plans involved Ren. The future, which before seemed like a dizzying kaleidoscope of possibilities, has collapsed into a colorless singularity of unknowable horror. He can't predict when or how he will meet his doom– whether Snoke will simply finish him off or concoct some torture even more prolonged and hellish than the last one– but he is certain of its inevitability. The thought that Ren will likely be the one to kill him doesn't bear contemplating.

 

He gets up from the bench and deposits his cup and bowl into the sanitation slot beside the serving counter. When he turns around, Colonel Kaplan is standing a few meters away from him, pointing a blaster at his chest.

 

Hux takes a startled step backward. “What do you think you're doing?” he sneers. He reaches reflexively for his own blaster, his heart skipping a beat when he finds it's missing from his hip. Of course it is. Ren threw it out in the snow.

 

“I'm so sorry it's come to this, General,” says Kaplan. “I was a great admirer of your father, you know. And I've always respected you. But you've given me no choice.”

 

“You will beg for death before Kylo Ren kills you,” says Hux.

 

“Kylo Ren left the base hours ago,” says Kaplan, easily calling Hux's bluff. “He has abandoned you, just as I knew he would.” He inclines his head as though in sympathy. “I can understand how you might have deceived yourself into thinking he was your ally. I could scarcely believe my own eyes when I saw him without his mask... He's just a boy, I thought. No older than my own son. Maybe you regarded him as a peer. But did you really think he would choose you over his master?” His shoulders shift, but he doesn't drop the gun. “Whatever arrangement he might have had with you is meaningless to him. Force-creatures do not make binding contracts with ordinary people. We are insects to them, Hux. Their only society is with each other.”

 

“What do you hope to accomplish by this?” Hux asks, glancing towards the door.

 

“Your guards aren't coming for you. I ordered all the stormtroopers in this sector to investigate a disturbance down in the garage. There's no one up here but you and me. By the time they get back, you'll already be dead.”

 

“And what about you?” Hux bares his teeth. “This base is filled with people who, unlike you, are loyal. They'll execute you for killing me.”

 

“There are worse things than death,” says Kaplan. “I am willing to die for the First Order. Willing to die to protect my daughter and son.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Hux eyes his stance, searching for signs of weakness. The fact that Kaplan hasn't shot him yet indicates, perhaps, a lack of resolve that can be exploited. The hand that holds the blaster is subtly trembling. He's not angry at Hux. He's afraid.

 

“The Order must be turned back over to the Supreme Leader,” says Kaplan, his eyes shining with contained emotion. “Without his favor, it will perish.”

 

“Snoke has no real interest in the prosperity of the Order,” says Hux. “Why should we allow ourselves to be used by a being who cares nothing for us? You put it quite well yourself, Colonel. We are insects to him.”

 

“And yet, we have no choice but to serve him. It is the only way we can survive.” Kaplan frowns in worlds-weary sorrow. “You are young, Hux. Perhaps you don't remember. How did the Old Republic manage to last a thousand generations, despite its corruption and decadence? Simple: It was propped up by the Jedi. And how did it finally collapse? It was reformed into the Galactic Empire by the Sith. And then, the Sith-Emperor and his sorcerer Vader ruled for a generation until they were felled by the new Jedi: Skywalker and Organa. Without their aid, the Rebellion would never have stood a chance. Just as the Resistance would not exist without Organa today.” His blaster hand is shaking more noticeably now. “Don't you see?” he asks. “Those who are gifted with the Force write history. No government can survive without their support. This is _their_ galaxy, Hux. Men like you and I... We just live in it.”

 

Kaplan glances downward, as though briefly overcome with religious feeling, and Hux seizes the opportunity to lunge at him. He grabs at his forearm, and Kaplan fires reflexively, hitting Hux in the shoulder at point blank range.

 

Reeling in pain, Hux falls backwards and pulls Kaplan down with him. As they topple over each other, the blaster flies from Kaplan's hand and goes skittering across the floor. They struggle, grunting and grappling for several minutes. Hux is younger and quicker than Kaplan, but the shoulder wound hinders him, and soon Kaplan has both hands wrapped around his throat. A look of anguish passes over Kaplan's face. He was prepared to do this with a blaster, but it's different with his bare hands. Of course, as an officer of the First Order, he is trained to kill. But he does not seem to relish killing Hux, his general, a symbol of the very government he is so desperate to defend. Hux tries to pry Kaplan's hands from around his throat, but it's impossible with only one good arm. Seconds pass in which he begins to grow lightheaded from the lack of oxygen. Staring into Kaplan's eyes, Hux knows– somehow _knows–_ that he is thinking of his pale haired son, an engineer, Hux remembers from his file, only a few years younger than Hux himself. Hux wonders if this is what reading minds feels like for Ren.

 

Kaplan's resolve, and therefore his grip, falters. Hux seizes the opportunity, kneeing him in the gut and wriggling out of his arms. He dives for the blaster, but Kaplan catches him by the ankle, putting both hands on Hux's leg and pinning it with all his weight. Hux kicks him in the face with his free leg, breaking his nose with a dull squelch. Kaplan cries out, but doesn't leg go.

 

“This is for your good as much as anyone else's!” he exclaims, blood streaming from his nose, his voice distorted by the obstruction of his sinuses. “The Supreme Leader will not give you the option of such a clean death!”

 

Breathing hard, Hux struggles all the more because he knows Kaplan is right. It would be better to allow himself to be cut down here and now than to wait for Snoke's retribution, but he can't bring himself to admit defeat to this mortal man. He wants to look his true enemy in the eye, even if it means being pulled apart atom by atom with the Force.

 

He wants to see Ren again, even if it's at the point of his lightsaber.

 

He makes a strangled noise, trying to heave himself across the floor in the direction of the blaster while pinned under Kaplan's weight. Kaplan grabs a fistful of Hux's hair, yanking him back.

 

“You're not going to survive this, Hux!” Kaplan yells, his voice beginning to crack with emotion. “Even if you kill me, there's no escape for you. You've angered the gods. For the good of the First Order, give yourself up!”

 

“Never,” Hux grinds out, trying to free his hair from Kaplan's grip. He writhes on his belly, clawing at the floor for purchase with his blunted hands until the scabs begin to tear from his fingers and he's leaving tracks of blood, but Kaplan keeps wrenching him back. Making a small noise of distress, Kaplan finally musters the nerve to end it, slamming Hux's head against the plastone tile with a loud crack.

 

While Hux lies dazed on the floor, Kaplan scrambles to his feet and retrieves the blaster. Spinning around, he levels it at Hux. “I'm sorry,” he chokes. “I'm sorry it has to be this way.”

 

Hux blinks up at him, his vision swimming, hair plastered to his forehead with blood. All he can feel in this moment is a sort of vague embarrassment that he's about to die with a scrap of food caught in his teeth.

  
There's a flash of blaster fire, a whiff of smoke, and Kaplan goes crashing to the floor.

 

“General, are you alright?” someone is asking. Hux groans in answer, hauling himself to his knees. Colonel Nai is standing over Kaplan's corpse, her small side arm still drawn. “What happened?”

 

“He tried to kill me,” says Hux.

 

“Well, yeah. I gathered that much,” Nai offers Hux her hand, pulling him to his feet and then leading him to one of the nearby mess tables. They sit down next to each other, facing backwards on the bench. “Look at me,” says Nai, pressing her palm to his brow and searching his eyes.

 

“What are you doing?” Hux huffs. A part of him wants to pull away from her touch on principle– He's already been man-handled by his subordinates enough for one day– but the rest of him realizes she's only trying to help.

 

“You're bleeding from the head, so I'm checking you for a concussion. How do you feel?”

 

“Like one of my own men just tried to assassinate me,” says Hux. His hands are shaking. “But I don't think I have a concussion. I suppose it's lucky you were hungry.”

 

“Is that your way of thanking me for saving your life?” Nai squints at him.

 

“I shouldn't have to thank you for doing your damn job, Officer,” says Hux, but his tone is mild. There is something about Nai's hand on his forehead that warms him in ways he is loathe to examine.

 

“I wasn't even hungry, actually,” she says. “I saw the command Kaplan sent out appear in the log, emptying out this whole sector, and it didn't sit right with me. A feeling, you know?” Her eyes soften. “I think I've always been able to sense when you were in trouble.”

 

Hux's heart clenches. How he had once longed for this to be true! A distant memory surfaces– Nai as a slender girl, waving to him from the back of a retreating troop transport in her new cadet uniform– and he pushes it aside. Hux is no longer the small boy who begged for her to stay at the Commandant's manor and teach him how to plot the stars and hunt the animals that roamed the sprawling, ill-kept grounds. She is no longer big Bele to him, and he is no longer little Armie. He looks away, his gaze falling on Kaplan's body. “I'm sorry about him,” he nods. “I know he and you were together.”

 

“Oh, _please_ ,” Nai snorts. “He wished. He had a wife and two children, you know. But the man wouldn't leave me alone.” She holsters her side arm. “I feel bad for his family, of course. But it had to be done. He was about to kill you. And you're a lot more important than he is, in the grand scheme of things. Speaking of grand schemes,” she smiles, “I want in on whatever it is you're planning.”

 

Hux frowns slowly. “What makes you think I'm planning to do anything other than what I've already explained?” he asks, cradling his wounded arm in his lap. “Snoke had to be removed. It was in the best interest of the First Order.” Violet spots are slaloming before his eyes. He is losing a lot of blood, he realizes, in a dreamy, third person sort of way.

 

“It was a long time coming,” says Nai. “Why didn't you do it earlier? Right after Starkiller, when he more or less abandoned us?”

 

“You've obviously got a theory,” says Hux.

 

“Yeah, I guess I do.” Nai crosses her arms, facing straight ahead and squinting as though into the future. “I think something's happened. And I think it's got something to do with Kylo Ren and the Force. You couldn't do anything about Snoke until you could convince Ren to go along with it. You had to offer him something, though I can't think of what. Maybe you've been planning this forever and have only just now managed to pull it off. It's alright if you can't talk about it yet. I just want you to know that I'm on your side. I'm looking out for you.”

 

“And who asked you to do that?” Hux sniffs. “Where did this attitude of yours come from? Don't tell me it's anything as sentimental as your loyalty to the memory of my father.”

 

“Are you joking?” she asks. “You must be. You must have pieced it together by now– ” She stops. “Or have I said too much?”

 

“What?” Hux narrows his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

 

Nai leans towards him, looking worried. “Stars, I thought you knew,” she says. “I'm the one who killed him.”

 

Hux's lips part in mute surprise. Of course. It was all right there in front of him, if only he'd been looking. But then, he hadn't been looking. The Commandant’s death had barely registered to him. At the time, he had been busy climbing the ranks and forgetting about the shallow reefs and bird songs of home. If anything, his father's mysterious poisoning had been a stroke of good fortune, propelling him to prominence within the First Order at a very young age– though he had never felt too precocious, in his impatience to advance himself. He has only now reached an age where he is old enough to recognize how young he is.

 

“He killed my mother,” Nai explains, looking from Kaplan's dead body to her own hands, which lie twisting and worrying in her lap. “Actually, he arranged for her to die in a shuttle crash. So I arranged for him to drown in his tanga root soup.”

 

“I see,” says Hux. “That... explains a few things.”

 

“I hope this won't prove to be too much of an obstacle in our future working relationship,” she says.

 

“Not at all.” Hux throws her a sidelong glance. “As long as you aren't thinking of trying to poison _me_.”

 

“Well, seeing as my mother's already dead– along with everyone else I might have known– you'd have to do something pretty egregious.” She gets up, walking towards the serving counter. “Sorry, I feel a headache coming on. I need some caf. Do you want any?”

 

“No, thank you,” says Hux. He squeezes one of his wrists, trying to block out the pain in his shoulder. It keeps throbbing, and fading, and then flaring up again. Nai sits back down beside him, tilting a steaming cup of caf against her lips with both hands. The smell is good, Hux thinks, calming. They are well into alpha shift at this point, and other people are going to start showing up at any minute. It is important that he master himself now, so that he can project authority when they arrive.

 

“Was she a political enemy?” Hux asks.

 

“Hm?” Nai blinks, distracted. She, too, is looking towards the door, perhaps considering how best to turn the story of rescuing Hux from an assassination attempt to her own political advantage.

 

“Your mother. Why did my father kill your mother?” For reasons Hux can't explain, the long-ago death of this woman he has never met suddenly feels very important to him. More important than the death of his own father ever did.

 

“Why do you think?” Nai moistens her lips before taking another long sip of her caf. “Because she wouldn't have sex with him.” She shakes her head, jostling the knot of braids at the crown of her skull. “Her name was Madele. She had me young. My father was much older than her, an officer in the Empire. He enrolled me at the Academy early on. To be rid of me, I suppose. Madele was a medic, stationed at the Academy, so I saw more of her than most people saw of their parents.” She swallows, realizing she's rambling in order to avoid getting to the point. “The Commandant took notice of her,” she says. “She wouldn't have sex with him, so he forced himself on her. And when she tried to have herself transferred to a different post, to get away from him... He had her killed. Simple as that. You remember how it was in those early days. People disappeared or turned up dead all the time, for all sorts of reasons.”

 

“I'm sorry,” Hux says abruptly, surprising himself. “In my Order, things like that won't happen anymore.” This sounds lame and childish even to his own ears. Foolish, to make promises at this juncture, when he doesn't even know whether he'll be able to hold onto his own life, much less the entire First Order.

 

But Nai just smiles. “I know. That's why I want in.” She seems to consider Hux anew, her brow furrowing in a way that for once makes her look every one of her forty-three years. “You're nothing like him, you know,” she says sharply. “You never have been, despite his best efforts to make you into his little clone.” She puts her cup down on the table, as if her line of thought has become too heavy for her to carry through to its conclusion while also having something in her hands. “Maybe you don't remember him the way I do. I don't even know _what_ you remember- Stars, you were so young!” She clicks her nails against the table, thinking. They are too long, Hux notes, to be considered regulation. He wonders, with a strange pang of remorse, whether Nai would paint them, if only she were permitted to. He thinks of the chrome-fingered Ren from his dream, and bites his tongue, stifling the urge to start promising her wild things. “The Commandant was a cruel, selfish, petty little man,” she continues. “He believed in breeding loyalty, because he believed in people owing him things. I don't think he ever really saw the potential in the Order, in what he himself was helping to build. And in the end, he paid the price for his lack of vision.”

 

Hux's head is pounding, and he's beginning to wonder if maybe he should take Nai up on her offer of caf. “What if I told you I haven't actually got a plan at all?” he asks. “What if I said this whole thing with Snoke was the result of a stupid misunderstanding. But now, I can't back out, because it's gone too far. I have to go through with it, even if I haven't the slightest idea what I'm going to do. What if I said all that? Would you still want in?”

 

“I would,” says Nai. “I always thought allying ourselves with Snoke was a mistake.” She squints, her eyes darting back and forth in suspicion. “He wasn't the Supreme Leader to begin with, if you recall. There were others, men and women from the Empire– But then people started to disappear, or turn up dead. And he came out of nowhere, and was greeted as some kind of savior. I've never liked it. It's aways seemed to me that he was the one who got rid of all of them in the first place.”

 

“Not _all_ of them,” says Hux with an sniff of amusement. “ _You_ got rid of the Commandant for him. And Kaplan.” He nods at the corpse on the floor. “It seems the old guard are still dropping like flies.”

 

Nai looks up, her eyes wide. “That's just it, isn't it? With Kaplan dead, I'm the oldest person on this base. Hux, I was eleven when the Empire fell. I barely remember it. Most people here don't remember it at all.” A haunted look passes over her face. “It feels deliberate, somehow,” she says. “You know, when I was a little girl, under the Empire, we used to have history classes in school.”

 

“What are you trying to say?” Hux frowns. His heart skips in a way he doesn't understand. It feels not unlike being caught in a lie. “The First Order provides instruction to everyone, in history as in all other important subjects. Unlike the Republic, where education is only for the rich. Every stormtrooper knows how we got to where we are and why we are at war.” He can feel himself defaulting to talking points, because he doesn't know how else to respond to her. He is educated about politics, about the Old Republic and the Empire. But Nai has started to say things that aren't in the script.

 

“Yeah,” she nods, “but it's not the same.” Her nails clack against the table with nervous energy. She has seized on this. Hux wants to tell her to stop, to let go of it, but he doesn't know what's happening. “There's something missing,” she says. “Something about the way time works. We talk about the past like it's a holo we all saw. It seems so... _flat_. It doesn't seem like any of it really happened.”

 

“Of course the past happened,” says Hux, growing angry. “What are you talking about?”

 

“I'm not saying it didn't!” says Nai. “I'm saying the way we talk about it, the way we imagine it– It feels shallow to me. Too simple. I've always thought there must have been more to it. But all we have to go on are holos, and things our parents told us. And now our parents are dead. It seems like _everyone's_ parents are dead.” She looks shaken. “You're how old, Hux: Thirty-four? Have you ever asked yourself why almost everyone you know is younger than you?”

 

Hux opens his mouth, only to close it again. This conversation feels so unreal, that for a moment he's tempted to believe he's still fast asleep, still safely wrapped in Ren's arms.

 

Nai scrubs a hand over her mouth. “Maybe I'm way out of line, here. But what are you going to do 'Supreme Leader,' have me killed? No. You can't afford it.”

 

“You're awfully confident,” says Hux.

 

“Well, I didn't manage to survive this long by being timid,” Nai laughs. “People think that if you keep your head down, and follow all the rules, and don't let a hair out of place, you'll make it in the First Order. And, sure, a lot of people get along like that, but it's not the only way. I'm where I am today because I know how to work things.” She nods, explaining this to herself as much as to Hux. “The Commandant used to talk all the time about discipline and conformity, and most people took him at his word. But I learned early on that if you knew how to flatter him, how to make yourself a part of his circle, then the rules wouldn't apply to you the same as everyone else. It wasn't easy, getting close to him. Letting him think he could have me... But it was worth it in the end.” She rounds her lips and shows her teeth in an expression of mixed anger and satisfaction, and for a moment Hux struggles to name it: Is it righteousness? “Look,” she says, “what's past is past. All I'm saying is, I'm glad we've broken with Snoke. Even if we can't see the full picture yet, I think this change is happening for a reason.” She picks her caf back up again and sighs, as if she has just lain down some other, invisible burden. “I can feel that something big is about to happen, and I want to be a part of it. A part of _your_ Order. I want to help you however I can.”

 

“I appreciate that, Colonel,” says Hux. And he finds he does. He is equal parts disturbed and comforted by Nai. He really shouldn't be allowing himself to feel either of these things, but maybe, with it being the end of the world and all, it no longer counts.

 

“You know, my friends call me Ebele,” says Nai. She eyes him sideways over the rim of her cup. She takes a sip of caf, wincing at the taste. “Ugh, it's gone cold,” she complains, putting it back down.

 

“Since when are we friends?” Hux asks. He means to scoff at her, but by the time the words are out of his mouth, they sound like a real question.

 

“You're going to need friends like me. You can't do this all by yourself.” She shoots him a knowing smile. “Even if the Force is with you.”

 

“You mean Ren?” Hux laughs, though he feels more like sobbing. “Ren's gone.”

 

“Gone where?” Nai looks concerned, though more about Hux's well-being than about Ren's disappearance.

 

“He just... left the base,” says Hux. “Marched off into the snow. The Force makes people do things like that, apparently. You know Ren told me, at one point, that he didn't know what was real and what wasn't.” Hux shakes his head in misery. “I guess my agreement with him turned out to be one of the things that wasn't.” He presses the heal of his hand to one of his eyes, beginning to feel lightheaded. The violet spots are spreading like ink across his field of vision. He looks down, feeling a trickle of liquid exit the bottom of his pant leg. His blood is pooling on the floor. “Oh,” he says. “That's not good.” He sways in delirium, planting a hand on the seat of the bench in an attempt to steady himself.

 

“You're hit!” says Nai, leaping to her feet. “Why didn't you tell me you were hit?” While they were talking, the blood soaked through the fabric of his sleeve and gradually made its way down the entire left side of his body. Nai must not have noticed it, Hux thinks, against the black of his uniform.

 

“I'm fine,” Hux slurs, his tongue going lax in his mouth. The edges of his vision are growing dim, so that the world looks like he's peering at it through a ring of smoke. He tries to meet Nai's gaze, but suddenly he can't find her face. All he can see is the grey, plastone tile beneath his feet. He reaches out, but his hands can't seem to get a grip on anything.

 

The last thing he hears is “Damnit, Armie!” before darkness overtakes him and he plunges to the floor.

 

-

 

He dreams of Ren.

 

Hux is standing at the front of a conference room on the Finalizer, addressing a group of seated officers, and Ren is standing behind him with his arms wrapped around Hux's waist and his hands splayed over Hux's belly. Even as Hux is attempting to lead the meeting, Ren's helmeted head is mindlessly nuzzling the side of his neck.

 

Lieutenant Mitaka is trying to ask Hux a question, and Hux is trying to focus on answering him, but Ren is making it almost impossible. Ren's gloved hands are roaming all over Hux's torso, causing Hux to squirm and whimper in pleasure. Hux reddens, mortified by the sounds he is making and yet unable to stifle himself.

 

“Are you alright, General?” asks Mitaka.

 

Hux shakes his head mutely, making a high-pitched noise when one of Ren's hands reaches down to palm at his groin. The other officers sit patiently in their chairs, observing this exchange as if it's perfectly normal. “You are mine,” Ren growls in Hux's ear. His voice coming through the helmet sounds deeper and more processed than usual. He spins Hux around, picking him up by the waist and sitting him down on the edge of the conference table.

 

“Ren,” Hux blushes even harder, “you can't just have your way with me in front of our subordinates.” The officers don't seem to mind. They look on, plugging away at their datapads and sipping their caf, as if this sort of thing happens at every meeting they attend.

 

“I can have my way with you whenever I want,” says Ren. He presses Hux down onto his back and climbs onto the conference table, covering Hux's body with his own. “And there is nothing you can do to stop me, my Love.” He seizes Hux's wrists, pinning them above Hux's head. Hux looks around the room with pleading eyes, but no one comes to his aid.

 

“Why won't anyone stop him?” Hux cries.

 

“There's nothing we can do, General,” says Mitaka. “He has the Force.”

 

“But this is my ship,” Hux protests. “You are my crew. You can't let this happen to me!”

 

“Sorry, sir.” Mitaka shrugs.

 

Hux looks around for Colonel Nai, but she is nowhere to be found.

 

“Resistance is futile,” says Ren. He presses the front of his mask to Hux's face in a rough imitation of a kiss. When Hux begins to kiss it back, the mask melts away into thin air, and Ren's true face is bearing down on Hux, his dark eyes glinting with hunger.

 

“I want you,” Hux whimpers. “I'll let you have me in private. Why are you treating me like this? Humiliating me in front of all these people?”

 

Ren doesn't answer, using his knee to spread Hux's thighs apart and grinding his leg against Hux's groin. Hux tries to cry out, but finds himself quickly stifled as Ren captures his mouth, sucking on his tongue. Ren picks him up off the table, sliding his hands under Hux's butt and wrapping Hux's thighs around his own hips, carrying him like a child. Hux slings his arms around Ren's neck, grappling for purchase. He is torn between the desire to fight off Ren's attack and the desire to give in to Ren's delicious touches. His whole body is on fire with pleasure as their lips work against each other. Hefting Hux as if he weighs nothing, Ren backs up into a chair at the head of the conference table, sitting himself down with Hux in his lap. Hux's thighs sit atop Ren's thighs and his legs dangle behind Ren, straddling Ren's torso.

 

“How about we hold the meeting like this?” Ren laughs.

 

“No, please-” Hux cranes his neck, trying to look back at the officers behind him, but Ren grabs his head with both hands and forces him to face forward. Ren's gloves have disappeared, Hux notices, his warm palms sliding over Hux's cheeks, his fingers tangling in Hux's hair. He seizes another kiss. Hux makes muffled noises of protest, attempting to free his mouth so that he can speak to Ren, perhaps beg him for mercy, but it's useless. His chest is stuck to Ren's chest, his belly to Ren's belly, his groin to Ren's groin. He tries in vain to yank his tongue out of Ren's mouth, and his stomach lurches in realization: Their tongues have somehow merged. He chokes, saliva beginning to pool in his mouth because he can't figure out how to swallow around the obstruction. The tongue is a thick tube of muscle attached to the floor of each of their mouths, anchoring their faces together. It writhes like a snake between their teeth, as though receiving different neural commands from both of their brains simultaneously. Speechless and helpless, Hux gives a sob of frustration, kicking his legs and grabbing fistfuls of Ren's clothing. Ren sighs in rapture, slowly running his hands over Hux's back and sides.

 

 _Mine forever_ , Hux hears echoing through his head. _I'm never going to let you go_.

 

Hot tears are streaming down Hux's face, mixing with the saliva that's beginning to drip from his chin. Even though he can't turn around, he knows everyone in the conference room is looking at him. He can somehow feel their eyes on his back. He braces his hands against Ren's shoulders, shaking him, succeeding in nothing but causing their teeth to clack painfully against each other. He kicks and struggles. But there's nothing he can do. Ren has the Force.

 

-

 

He dreams of the Commandant.

 

They are standing in the Expiation Room, and the Commandant is using the chrono on his comlink to mark the minutes until Hux will be allowed to lower his arms. Hux is facing the mirror, and the Commandant is standing behind him. Hux's muscles ache from maintaining the same position for such a long time.

 

“Please, Sir,” Hux finds himself begging. “Can I put them down now?” He is startled by the sound of his own voice. It's high-pitched and thin– the voice of a child. In the mirror, he sees himself as a man, but when he looks down at his body, it is that of a little boy. His limbs feel tiny and weak and his arms are beginning to tremble from the effort of keeping them raised above his head. His nose itches, but he doesn't dare reach down to scratch at it.

 

“I think not,” says the Commandant.

 

“But Sir, it _hurts_ ,” Hux whimpers.

 

“Complain to me again, and I'll start the time over.”

 

Hux takes a deep breath, determined to hold back tears. His child body is unbearable, its awful scrawniness clearly discernible through his grey tunic and leggings. Seeing his older self trapped inside the mirror is an added torture. In the mirror, he and the Commandant are almost the same height. Hux is even, perhaps, a bit taller. He is still slender, but no longer disgustingly so. With hard work, and a good diet, he has managed to make himself at least average-looking. And Ren's healing had filled him out even more. But outside the mirror, Hux must crane his neck to meet the Commandant's eye. He can both see and feel how tiny and powerless he is in this form. It feels as if all the hard earned strength and firmness has been cruelly wrung from his body, like nectar from a ripened fruit, leaving him with nothing but the pit and skin.

 

“At ease,” says they Commandant. Hux slackens before the last syllable has even left the Commandant's mouth. His hands are numb from the lack of blood flow caused by keeping them above his heart. “On my command, you will raise them again,” says the Commandant, resetting the chrono.

 

 

In this, the original Expiation Room, the mirror was just a standard wall-hanging. It's use as a torture device would gradually evolve over time. During these early sessions, the Commandant would force Hux to hold various stress positions until he broke down crying from the pain. After noticing the way Hux's eyes always shied away from the mirror, he forced Hux to stand in front of it, glancing up from the chrono every once in a while to tell him how scrawny and sickly he looked. Years from now, the famous Expiation Room would be installed at the Academy. Within it, cadets would be confined, tortured, and humiliated, until the Commandant was certain of their devotion to him. The Room was a perfect cube, the interior of which was completely mirrored. Surrounded on all sides by their own reflections, forced to watch their own punishment, many potential cadets suffered nervous break downs and had to be removed from the program. Hux himself excelled at the Academy, in part because so many of its grueling training methods had already been tested on him as a child before they were applied to anyone else. For those who spent their early years in relative comfort as the offspring of wealthy, ex-Imperial parents, the transition to life at the Academy could be an enormous shock. For Hux, it was simply more of the same.

 

The Commandant used to say that the purpose of all the mirrors was to break down the myth of the self– Once an individual was forced to confront their own frailty through the process of Expiation, they would realize how insignificant and helpless they were without the approval of the group, and they would devote themselves whole-heartedly to the cause of the First Order. Hux now suspects that the real reason for the mirrors was that the Commandant liked to watch himself inflict suffering.

 

Instead of letting the image in the mirror taunt him, Hux decides to view it as a promise. His future self is not the strapping, beautiful man he used to pray adolescence would make him into, but he's not the emaciated, castoff wretch the Commandant used to threaten him with either. _You will overcome this_ , the image in the mirror seems to say. _You will stand taller than him. You will wield weapons he can't even conceive of. He will die face-down in his soup, and you will go on to do battle with gods._

 

“Now,” says the Commandant.

 

Hux complies, raising his quivering arms, but this time he can't keep them up for more than a minute. His child self crumples, anticipating his father's harsh words.

 

“Pathetic,” says the Commandant, slipping the comlink into his pocket. He never raises his voice. He doesn't have to. “I don't know why I waste my time trying to provide you with an education. You are obviously incapable of benefiting from my methods.”

 

Hux doesn't apologize or promise to do better in the future. He has already learned the futility of this. He just stands there, staring straight ahead, in silence. In the mirror, he can see a rectangle of pale grey sky through the window behind him. The rain looks relatively gentle today, and he wishes he could be outside, filling his basket with phlox. The delicate pink flowers dot the rocky shoreline of the Commandant's oceanfront estate, like bright confetti scattered by the hand of heaven, or like the gore of fairies who stormed the Commandant's beach in some imaginary siege.

 

The grey square in the corner of Hux's eye expands, consuming the wall behind them until the whole thing is a window and the rain is falling sideways into the Expiation Room. “Look what you've done now,” says the Commandant, disgusted, but not the least bit surprised. “Are you going to pay for that, boy?” he sneers.

 

Hux glances from the mirror to his father's face and, making up his mind, his turns and runs, flinging himself from the third story of the manor house and onto the rocky beach below, his little body exploding into a thousand blooms of phlox the second it hits the ground.

 

-

 

Hux wakes with a start. He is lying on his back in the medical bay. His temples are throbbing and his mouth tastes like bacta. Someone has stripped him, dunked him, dressed his wounds, and stuck him in a set of white patient scrubs. Hauling himself into a sitting position, he finds his bloodied clothes folded and draped across the back of an aluminum chair next to the bed. He reaches into one of the secret, interior pockets of his greatcoat, pulling out a slim, black fire-wand and a silver case of cigarettes. He lights one, giving it a thoughtful puff. He is grateful for something to rid his mouth of that syrupy medical flavor. Whatever was caught between his teeth is gone, rinsed away and sucked, like all other contaminants, down the drain of the bacta tank.

 

When Colonel Nai approaches his bedside, tapping away at her datapad, Hux squints up at her, wondering if she's real. Her hair is different than it was before, the knot undone so that her braids swing loose behind her, reaching almost to the middle of her back. She obviously thinks the fact that she once saw the new Supreme Leader cry over a skinned knee some twenty-five years ago gives her license to wear it however she wants, and Hux isn't even sure she's wrong.

 

“You can't smoke in here,” she says, looking up from the screen. “This is a medical bay. At least wait until you've been discharged before going right back to destroying your health.”

 

Hux taps his ashes into a bedpan on the upright supply cart beside him. “I'm fairly certain that as Supreme Leader, I can do whatever I damn well please,” he says. “Besides, this _is_ for my health. You know, my sanity.”

 

“How are you feeling?” Nai asks.

 

“Overall?” Hux considers how to answer her for a moment. “Terrible,” he decides. “But the shoulder is better, at least. How long was I out?”

 

“Most of the day,” says Nai. “It's almost epsilon shift.”

 

“Kriffing hells,” Hux shakes his head. “What have you been telling people?”

 

“Relax,” Nai smiles. “We've already held a meeting about Kaplan. You didn't mention why he wanted to kill you, but it wasn't hard for me to guess. I told everyone he was a Snoke-loyalist.”

 

“True enough,” Hux shrugs.

 

“I actually think this might have been one of the best things that could have happened to you,” says Nai.

 

“Getting shot by one of my own men?” Hux blows a perfect ring of smoke. Not that he's showing off or anything. “How do you figure that?”

 

“Well,” says Nai, “from what I was able to gather, it seems to be generating a lot of sympathy for you. People are saying Kaplan was a coward for going after you with a blaster while you were unarmed. You look embattled, because you've got enemies who want you dead, but also strong, because you managed to survive. It makes for good drama.”

 

“Drama?” Hux raises an incredulous eyebrow.

 

“You know, conflict,” says Nai. “People often like the same qualities in political figures as in holovid characters. They want someone who faces challenges. Someone they can root for. You're not going to have any luck trying to come across the way Snoke did, as some mysterious, all-knowing oracle. Everyone in the First Order knows what your face looks like, what your voice sounds like. You're a living, breathing person to them. You've got to learn how to use that to your advantage.”

 

Hux looks down at his nail beds, pretending to consider this. They don't even hurt anymore when he presses on them. The scabs are gone, and the bacta has rendered the skin smooth and pink. He wonders if the growth plates are permanently damaged. Maybe he can never grow fingernails again. He wonders if he'll live long enough to find out. “I'm hungry,” he says, looking up.

 

“I'm not surprised,” says Nai, looking back down at her datapad. “I'll go get you some food.” She starts to turn away from the bed, but stops, remembering something. “Oh!” she laughs. “I can't believe I almost forgot: We found Kylo Ren.”

 

Hux's heart comes to a halt in his chest. “Where?”

 

“Face down in the snow, a few hundred meters away from the base. I sent out a search party. They said it looked like he was trying to crawl back inside.”

 

“Is he..?” Hux swallows.

 

“He's fine,” says Nai. “Well, not _fine_. But he's alive. Any normal person would have frozen to death. They gave him a dip in one of those specialized solutions, you know, for hypothermia. I told them to keep him sedated until I could ask you what you wanted to do with him.”

 

Hux stands up, tossing his cigarette into the bedpan. “I have to see him,” he says. “Right now.”

 

“Don't you want to eat something first?” asks Nai.

 

Hux shakes his head. His hands are fluttering like trapped moths at his sides, nerves sparkling with sudden energy. He can't tell whether what he's feeling is hope or fear, or even remember the difference between the two.

 

-

 

They are keeping Ren in a small, white room on the far side of the medical bay. Hux has to force himself not to imagine what sort of state Ren might be in. Usually, only patients who require intensive care are quartered separately from the rest.

 

He enters alone, dismissing the nurses. Ren is laid out on the bed in the same white scrubs as Hux, a thermal blanket draped over him, a pile of hot packs covering his feet. What's left of his robes are in a bin on the floor, caked in blood and cut to shreds with medical scissors. His hair looks clean and soft. His skin looks pale but not, as Hux had unconsciously feared, blueish. Hux stands over him, paralyzed. Ren's eyes flutter open.

 

“You're awake,” says Hux.

 

“Where am I?” Ren groans. He starts to sit up, and Hux flinches, half expecting Ren to leap out of the bed and rip him apart. There is every reason to think his dark master has instructed Ren to return here and finish Hux off. For a moment, Hux can't believe he was worried for the well-being of this creature. This Sith-spawn demon with the face of a man, sent to win his heart right before ripping it out of his chest and eating it.

 

“You're in the medical bay. You had hypothermia, but you're recovering quickly, and the nurses say you'll be alright.”

 

Ren raises a hand to his face. “Is this real?” he asks. He looks lost.

 

“Of course it's real,” says Hux. He takes a step towards the bed. He wonders, briefly, whether Ren is playing innocent in order to trick him, but decides this probably isn't the case. What would be the point, after all, when there is nothing he can do to stop Ren from killing him anyway? Unless, of course, the point is to draw things out, to maximize his suffering– This thought freezes him mid-stride.

 

“Hux, _please_.” Disoriented and shivering, Ren makes a feeble effort to reach for him. “Give me my body back.”

 

“What do you mean?” Hux asks.

 

Ren looks up at him with clouded eyes. “He took it away again,” Ren says, his voice thick with misery.

 

Some barrier inside of Hux shatters. He climbs into the bed, rolling himself over onto Ren's chest, and wraps his arms around Ren's neck. “Listen to me,” he says, filled with a sudden, startling, perhaps even Jedi-like, clarity. “All of this belongs to you.” He cradles Ren's head in his hands, tilting it to make Ren look down the length of their bodies, tangled together in their matching, soft white clothes. He lifts Ren's chin, gazing into his eyes. “This is your face,” he says. “It doesn't exactly announce you as a prince, if that's what you are, but it's not as ugly as you think it is either.” He runs his hands all over Ren's torso, tracing his collar bone, his navel, the blades of his hips. “This is your body. You've got broad shoulders. Powerful arms. And yet your hands and feet somehow still manage to be too big for you.” Tears are streaming down Ren's face as he nuzzles Hux's shoulder. He looks like a man collapsing at the threshold of his home when he thought he'd never see his home again. Hux continues: “You taper in beautifully at the waist, and your belly actually has ridges. I've never seen that up close before, on a real man, you know. Just on holonet actors and Nabooan marbles,” Hux laughs. “You've got a great butt, and long, gorgeous legs. I love the way you stalk around on them, all hunched over like a nexu on the hunt. I shouldn't, because it's completely ridiculous. But I love it.”

 

“I– I can feel you,” Ren gasps. “And I can feel _myself_ feeling you.” His features are crumpled in agony. “I thought– I was afraid that maybe he'd taken it away forever this time. But no– You've given it back.” He crushes Hux against him, weeping with unutterable relief and joy. “You're wounded!” Ren exclaims, when Hux winces.

 

“It's alright,” says Hux. “I've been in bacta. It's still sore, but it'll be fine.”

 

“What happened?” Ren asks.

 

“Colonel Kaplan tried to assassinate me,” says Hux. “He got in a hit, but I managed to fight him off for a while, before Colonel Nai could intervene. She saved my life.”

 

“She shouldn't have had to,” says Ren, frustrated. “I should have been there.”

 

“Well, where were you?” Hux asks. He is both desperate to know the answer and terrified to learn it.

 

“I'm not sure.” Ren lies back against the pillow, coaxing Hux's head onto his chest and stroking his hair. “I remember a cave, filled with kaiburr crystals. But I don't know if I was ever really there, or how far I actually ventured from the base.”

 

“Why did you go to him?” Hux closes his eyes at the soothing sensation of Ren's blunt nails against his scalp. “Why did you leave, when I begged you to stay?”

 

“I didn't,” says Ren. “Or, no. I _did_ , but– I didn't know it was Snoke. He called to me in the voice of my grandfather.” Hux can hear Ren's heart hammering beneath his ear. “I saw him,” Ren continues, “in the cave. I saw Anakin. Or, what I thought was Anakin. He looked like... Like my mother, and like Luke. Like both of them at once. He was beautiful, and strong, and kind. He promised to teach me balance. How to walk in both the Darkness and the Light. He said it would finally make me whole. But then Snoke was there, too. Or maybe there was only Snoke. I don't know.”

 

Hux's blood runs cold. “Snoke is on the planet?” he asks, unable to stop himself from pressing closer to Ren in fear.

 

“No,” says Ren. “He was speaking to me through the Force. He was never physically present. Hux,” Ren shakes him. “He's not going to come here. He has to travel in spacecraft just like everyone else. No matter how powerful he is with the Force, he's still vulnerable to conventional weaponry. We'd shoot him out of the sky.”

 

“But surely, he has ways of arriving undetected.”

 

“Maybe. But it's a risk for him. Hux, this is important!” Ren is vibrating with excitement. “Before I knew about my body, I thought of him almost exclusively as a presence in the Force. He seemed unimaginably powerful to me, that way. But now. Hux, now that I can feel myself, I've started to realize something. He has a body, too. He's not just a voice or a hologram. He can't be everywhere at once. He can't fight off the whole fleet at once. Hux, I think he lured me out into the snow, in some last-ditch effort to get me away from you, because he's afraid of us. You have the full might of the First Order at your disposal, and I have the Force with me. Together, we can destroy him. And he knows it.” Ren gives Hux a look of such naked adoration that it steals Hux's breath. “He almost succeeded in deceiving me all over again,” Ren says. “But you saved me. Out there, in the cave. I could sense that you were in danger. And I think that's what broke the spell and made me turn back.”

 

With shaking hands, Hux pulls Ren into a ravenous kiss. The fabric of their patient scrubs slides between their bodies with delicious, torturous softness. Ren groans, vibrating his chest beneath Hux's body, which serves to excite Hux even more. They are clutching at each other, seizing fistfuls of each other's clothes, when Hux pulls his mouth away, panting. “Ren, wait,” he says. “I think we both need to recover a bit before round two.”

 

“That's alright,” says Ren. “We don't have to have sex right now. Maybe we could just give each other sex-touches?”

 

“What?” Hux sputters at Ren's strange, infantile language.

 

“You know...” Ren looks sheepish. “The kinds of touches that make you feel sex-feelings. But without going all the way.”

 

Hux gapes at him. “In the name of all the gods, Ren,” he says, recovering his capacity for speech. “You can't call it that!”

 

“Well, what do you want me to call it?” Ren huffs.

 

Hux shakes his head. “We'll talk about it later,” he says, giving Ren a quick peck before settling back down against Ren's chest.

 

“I wish I never had to eat, or breath, or speak ever again,” says Ren. “I wish I could just keep kissing you forever.”

 

Hux stiffens, reminded of something unpleasant, some scrap of a nightmare. Kaplan's words haunt him. No matter what Ren says, he has to wonder: How can such a powerful Force user love a mere mortal? He thinks of Han Solo, dead at the core of Starkiller. A hapless pawn in some obscure game between Ren, Organa, and Snoke. He thinks of Darth Vader's nameless, faceless wife. Dead at the dawn of the Empire, all records of her scrubbed from memory. What makes Hux any different? Is he not an insect, a plaything, to Ren?

 

“You're safe,” says Ren, sensing his anxiety.

 

“I wish I could feel safe,” says Hux.

 

Ren squeezes him around the middle, stroking his lips against Hux's hair. “I didn't put you back together exactly the same as you were before,” he says. “I wanted you to live and be healthy so badly, that I put a bit of extra muscle on you without meaning to. I hope you don't mind it.” He sighs, his breath hot against Hux's scalp. “I did something to your body without your permission. I think I'm just starting to realize what's been done to me. And if I've done anything even remotely similar to you– If I've hurt you... I'm sorry.”

 

“Not at all,” says Hux. He is taken aback by how much this affects him, this verbal affirmation of his rights to his own body. Ren's words warm him enormously, banishing some of his previous fear. “I... I like that you made me thicker,” he says. “I've always hated being so thin.” He looks up at the plastone ceiling, grey as the beaches of Arkanis, and imagines it dotted with brilliant pink phlox. “There's still one last thing I don't understand,” he says. This is patently false– there are any number of things Hux doesn't understand about what's happening between them. “The Force doesn't violate the principles of conservation, does it? It can't just make something out of nothing. So where did you pull the extra mass from?”

 

“I don't know, exactly,” says Ren. “Maybe some of it was from the air. Many of the elements in the human body can be found in the air.”

 

“What?” Hux blinks in disbelief. This explanation is somehow even more incredible than the idea that his new tissue came out of nowhere, or was pulled from some pocket dimension. “What about the iron for my blood? Calcium, phosphorus, potassium? You can't have pulled everything out of the air. You– you can't just conjure up flesh like that.” He squeezes his hands into fists at his sides, suddenly worried his limbs might decide to evaporate into a bloody mist and rejoin the atmosphere around them.

 

“The most important ingredient in flesh is water,” Ren explains. “I pulled a lot of the moisture from the air. And the rest...” Ren looks timid, as though he's worried Hux will be angry with him. “I think I pulled the rest out of my own body.” Hux turns his head and gawks at Ren, half expecting to see chunks missing from him, or a limb he somehow didn't notice before was gone. “I can't really explain it,” says Ren turning his face against the pillow. “I don't understand this aspect of my powers yet. And I was in a kind of trance when all this was happening.”

 

“You... gave me some of your flesh?” Hux asks, going white.

 

“I think so?” Ren turns away from the pillow to meet Hux's gaze. “There were these... wounds that started. Opening up all over me. While I was healing you. But afterwards, they closed themselves completely, and left no scars. And the end result is that I'm a little bit slimmer than I was, and you're a little bit thicker.”

 

“So, before I saw you naked, you were even bigger than this?” Hux asks, gesturing at Ren's physique as if _that's_ the miracle here.

 

“Yes.” Ren frowns at Hux's look.

 

“A shame I never got to see you in all your glory.”

 

“You will,” says Ren. “With training, I can regain what I've lost.”

 

Watching the rise and fall of Ren's sculpted chest, one of Hux's hands flies, unbidden, to his own heart. He shudders with fear and delight at the thought of some of Ren's magical sinews interwoven amongst his own. When he tries to picture the process by which this transplant must have happened, the images that come to mind are repulsive and grotesque. But his flesh hums with life, and a honey-bright warmth he wouldn't trade for anything in the galaxy.

 

“I don't think there's any danger of tissue rejection,” says Ren, smoothing a hand over Hux's cheek. “I took the raw materials out of my body, but I rearranged them to match your body. I don't think they still have my genetic code or anything like that.”

 

“What about the Force,” Hux asks, half-joking. But only _half_ joking. “Do my new bits have the Force?”

 

“Of course they do,” says Ren. “The Force flows through all living cells.” He is being, Hux's senses, intentionally obtuse.

 

“You know what I mean.”

 

Ren noses Hux's hair in thought. “Your asking if having material from my body inside of you could increase your Force sensitivity? It's possible, I suppose. I have no idea.”

 

“How do I tell,” Hux asks, “if I can use it?”

 

“Well, you can,” says Ren, as if this should be obvious. “Almost everyone can use it, at least to some extent.”

 

“What?” Hux flips himself around so that they are face to face and he is pinning Ren beneath him. “Then why aren't there Jedi running around all over the place? And what makes you so kriffing special if it's not your genes?”

 

“One question at a time,” says Ren, sounding terribly amused. “First of all, it requires years of training for most people to make any progress, and it's almost impossible to discover any of these things on your own, without a teacher. There aren't a bunch of Jedi running around, because the arcane knowledge of the Jedi is almost entirely lost. Most people, even if they have the potential to be strong in the Force, will never develop their powers in any significant way. Their abilities might manifest as intuition, or luck, or meaningful dreams. But without someone to teach them, they aren't going to figure out how to use telekinesis, for example.”

 

“The scavenger girl–” says Hux. “Is that what made her so extraordinary? That she was figuring it out on her own?”

 

“Yes and no,” says Ren. “She _has_ had some training, actually. With Luke. Though, I don't think she remembers it...” Ren looks away. “But yes, she's extraordinarily gifted.”

 

“Because of her genes?”

 

“Probably?” Ren squints. “I don't think it's that simple. But certain people– people like her and me– have an enormous advantage over everyone else in terms of developing our abilities. Most people need their connection to the Force to be. Switched on, in some way, usually by the intervention of an experienced Force user. That's how it was for Luke and Leia. They didn't even know about their powers before they encountered some of the old Jedi, and learned of their relation to each other.” A look of sadness passes over his face, like a cloud passing over a star. “It was different, for me,” he says. “I was _born_ extremely sensitive. Luke thought maybe it was because my mothers' connection was activated while she was pregnant with me. But I don't think anyone really knows.”

 

“So, that's why you're so powerful then?” Hux licks his lips, tingling with awe and desire at Ren's body lying beneath him. “Because you've had such a head start? Or because your abilities are innate, while others must study and practice for years to achieve them?” He wants to kiss Ren, but more than that, he wants to understand what in the nine Corellian hells Ren is talking about, so he restrains himself.

 

 

“Yes,” Ren says, “but that's only part of it. I was born extremely powerful. But there was also. Something wrong with my connection to the Force. A kind of birth defect, maybe.”

 

 

Hux opens his mouth, preparing to argue against this, but closes it, realizing he knows nothing about it.

 

 

“I was so keenly attuned to the thoughts and emotions of others, that for the first several years of my life, I struggled to even recognize my own, independent existence.” Ren takes a shuddering breath. “Hux, I've never explained this to anyone before. My family, and later Snoke– They recognized it better than I did. They were the one's who explained it to _me_.”

 

 

“Do you trust me with this knowledge, Ren?” Hux asks, looming intently. “I trust _you_. With everything, now, I think. Do you trust me?”

 

 

Ren nods, his eyes already brimming with fresh tears. It's remarkable, Hux thinks, how often he seems to cry. He wouldn't last ten minutes in the Expiation Room, that way. “Nothing seemed wrong with me, at first,” Ren explains. “All infants are attached to their mothers. But eventually, they begin to separate themselves, to form their own identities. I couldn't. I was so immersed in my mother's mind, I could't tell it wasn't my own. I learned to speak, like all small children, by imitating her. But then, I could _only_ imitate her. I was 'mirroring' her. That's what they called it. Leia hated it. She was such an independent person, she couldn't understand why I wasn't, too. And the older I got, the longer I failed to develop a mind of my own, the more frustrated with me she became. _Parasite_ , she thought. I could see that word in her mind. I don't think I even knew what it meant back then, but I could understand the sense of it. A _thing_ , sucking at her Force-presence like a mynock sucks at power cables. She began to shield her thoughts from me, and I began to tear through her shields, to rip the thoughts out of her head. It was at this point, that she began to fear me. Darth Vader himself had failed to extract information from her mind when she was a prisoner aboard the first Death Star. But here I was, at seven years old, already succeeding where he had failed. She could hide _nothing_ from me. And she found it unbearable. So she sent me away.”

 

 

“To the Jedi?” Hux asks, captivated by Ren's story, his hands gripping Ren's shoulders in suspense.

 

“There was only Luke, to begin with. The others came later.” Ren stares up at the grey ceiling, collecting himself for a moment, and Hux wonders he if can see the phlox Hux has planted there with is mind. “It wasn't so bad when Luke and I were alone, and I could mirror him. But when the others came, they made everything worse for me. Soon, I was drowning in the ocean of all their minds. Luke didn't know what to do. He kept trying to teach me to meditate, to open myself up to the Light. The Darkness is willful, while the Light is serene and passive. Jedi open themselves up to the Light in order to let go of their willful selfishness, and empathize with all the life around them. For Luke, this was calming and clarifying. But for me, it was _intoxicating_. It felt good, while at the same time, it was ripping my mind apart. Like a drug.” Ren pauses, working his jaw, as though searching for the right words. “I could feel this... little stub of a person, buried deep inside of me. My true self, struggling to grow, constantly thwarted and kept down by the onslaught of other peoples' thoughts and emotions. The philosophy of the Jedi was useless to me. Empathy, the Light, was already my curse.”

 

“So you chose the Darkness?” Hux asks softly. “Because it allowed your true self grow?”

 

“Yes,” Ren breathes. “Or at least, that's what I believed.” He runs his hands over Hux's back, from the nape of his neck to the bottom of his spine. “While I was with Luke, I seemed to make progress. My mother came to visit one day– I must have been eleven at the time– And she was so proud of me, I remember. So relieved. I was finally acting like a real person. I could even talk without copying anybody. She thought Luke had cured me, and maybe Luke let himself believe that, too. But it was Snoke.” He looks distracted, watching Hux's throat bob as Hux swallows. “Snoke used to say that strength was freedom from fear, freedom from desire. Things like that. He always talked about shutting out distractions, getting rid of attachments, in order to eliminate the self. But to me, it felt like I was gaining a self for the very first time. The Darkness helped me to focus my will, to turn off my empathy. I could see that my personality was becoming increasingly hard to tolerate for almost everyone around me. But at least I finally _had_ a personality.” He closes his eyes, more tears slipping out. “It was around this time that Snoke started disconnecting me from my body. But I didn't perceive it that way. I thought, this must be how normal people feel: numb and separated. It wasn't until you gave it back to me, that I realized I'd lost something important.” He gives a choked sob. “I thought the Dark voice inside of me was the voice of my true self. But now, I think it was Snoke. I was just mirroring him, instead of my mother or Luke. I was never cured at all. Hux,” he says, his eyes bright-black and pleading. “All I want now, is to mirror you. If I'm doomed to live my life as an empty vessel for other people's minds, at least I can chose whose mind I want to be filled with.” His breath puffs hotly against Hux's face. “I want _yours_.”

 

“You're not an empty vessel, Ren,” says Hux. “Sorry– Kylo. You asked me to call you Kylo.” It sounds strange in Hux's mouth, but it seems important to affirm Kylo's identity in this way, to use his chosen name. He bows to kiss the top of Kylo's head. “Yours is by no means the most scintillating personality I've ever encountered,” says Hux, “but you've certainly got one. You're not Organa. You're not Skywalker. You're not Snoke. And you're _definitely_ not me. You are your own, unique being.”

 

“How do you know?” Kylo asks, searching Hux's face in wonder.

 

Hux's limbs are loose, his eyelids heavy, his heart overflowing with, perhaps, the Light. “Because I know who my Love is,” he smiles.

 

Kylo melts. Their mouths are sealed together before either of them knows what's happening, hands fisted in each others' hair. They twist and roll together, Kylo barely managing to catch them with the Force before they tumble out of the narrow hospital bed and end up on the floor. “What about you?” he asks, panting. “Shouldn't I be calling you by _your_ first name?”

 

“Under no circumstances,” says Hux.

 

“Why not?” asks Kylo. “What is it?”

 

Hux rolls his eyes. “You're going to make me say it out loud? You can't just pluck it from my mind?”

 

“It can't be that bad...” Kylo presses.

 

“Armitage,” says Hux. “It's Armitage.”

 

“Oh,” Kylo blinks. “Oh, _no_...” He starts to shake with laughter. “It really _is_ that bad. I– I can't call you that!”

 

“Exactly,” says Hux, annoyed. “I warned you, and you didn't take me seriously. From now on, you're going to have to start trusting my judgement. There's a reason why I'm Supreme Leader, you know.” He leans in, silencing Kylo's laughter with a kiss.

 

-

 

Within days, almost every First Order outpost has sent communication to Illum, disavowing Snoke and affirming the authority of Supreme Leader Hux. Within the week, they are contacted by agents of the Resistance, seeking to reopen diplomatic relations with the First Order in light of Snoke's sudden removal.

 

The Resistance envoy Hux receives at the observatory on Illum Base seems none too happy to be there. He declines Hux's offer of drink, always hanging back behind his compliment of body guards. Hux keeps Kylo within arms reach at all times as his own security measure– Looking lovely with his hair pulled back, and wearing a First Order uniform in lieu of is ruined robes. Nothing much comes of their brief discussion. The envoy is being toyed with, and he knows it. The new Supreme Leader has no interest in offering the Resistance anything. Hux is feeling magnanimous enough, however, that he allows the man to live.

 

At the end of their meeting, the envoy approaches Kylo, looking fearful but determined. He pulls something out of his pocket, and for a moment, Hux is worried it's a thermal detonator they somehow didn't catch. It looks to be a small, red cylinder with a screw-off top, made out of cheap metal, like a container for candies or pills. “I was instructed to deliver this directly into your hands,” says the envoy to Kylo. He does an admirable job, Hux thinks, of keeping the tremor from his voice.

 

Kylo accepts the cylinder, nodding, and slips it into the pocket of his borrowed uniform.

 

Later, when they are tangling together among Hux's sheets, Hux asks him about it:

 

“I skimmed his mind,” says Kylo. “He had no idea what it was. He's a loyal agent, and he delivered it faithfully, without looking inside.”

 

“Aren't you going to open it?” Hux asks.

 

Kylo sighs. He reaches down into the pile of discarded clothes on the floor, retrieving the cylinder from his pocket. Sitting up on the bed, he unscrews the cap, withdraws something, and tosses the container aside. It's a slip of flimsi. Kylo unfolds it, staring at it for a moment, his face not registering anything.

 

“Well?” Hux asks, growing impatient. “What is it, then?”

 

Kylo hands it to him, not even meeting his eyes. Hux frowns down at the note. It's made of cheap, thin paper. At first, Hux doesn't know what to make of it, but after a moment, it's meaning seems clear. Written in an elegant, courtly script, with a pale blue drafting pencil, are four words:

 

_Ben–_

_Is it true?_

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out, this is going to be the first in a series. The sequel, _A Plague on Both Houses_ , alternates between Leia and Kylo's POV.


End file.
